Tag: Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Joseph Green March 10, 2016

February 28, 2016

Ghost Town Flyer March 10 2016

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna

7 pm
Thursday, March 10
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Food and libation provided by
Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street

LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
printedmattervancouver.com
angstgallery.com

9781936657179-cov-FINAL.indd

Featuring Joseph Green: Joseph Green’s most recent collection of poems is What Water Does at a Time Like This (MoonPath Press 2015), following That Thread Still Connecting Us (MoonPath 2012), The End of Forgiveness (Floating Bridge, 2001), Greatest Hits: 1975—2000 (Pudding House, 2001), Deluxe Motel (Signpost Press, 1991), and His Inadequate Vocabulary (Signpost, 1986). Through the Peasandcues Press, Green and his wife, Marquita, produce limited-edition, letterpress-printed poetry broadsides using hand-set metal type; and at the C.C. Stern Type Foundry & Museum of Metal Typography, in Portland, he works to preserve the craft of casting the type itself.

IMG_0216

What You Can Say to Me When I’m Dead
by Joseph Green

I won’t want to talk about the war,
so don’t start. I won’t say anything at all
about politics. I’ve already had it

up to here with gossip.
And God is no good, either,
as a conversational topic. I’ll be finished,

too, with gnawing on the dry bones
of art, of accomplishment.
You can put them into your own

soup if you feel like it. I’ll be lying
down for a while. Just fill me in
on what you’ve been up to.

Please join us on March 10 for Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic featuring Joseph Green, poet, letterpress printer, and author of What Water Does at a Time Like This.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1555212558124357/

 

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Steve Williams at Angst Gallery, February 11, 2016

January 18, 2016

Ghost Town Flyer February 2016

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna

7 pm
Thursday, February 11
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Food and libation provided by
Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street

LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
angstgallery.com

Featuring Steve Williams

156603_1781382052930_3054073_n

Steve Williams is the author of a new chapbook entitled Thirteen, a poem. He works in Portland, helping those who have barriers to employment find jobs. He lives with a lovely woman who writes and edits much better than he but refuses to admit it.

ThirteenFrontCover

Shades
by Steve Williams

One grandfather’s shadow is fresh tar
on the roof outside my window.
The other grandfather’s shadow –
a wind-up Indian with broken hands.

My grandmothers are whiskey radio baseball
and a garden full of curio cabinets and canning jars.

Corky, Blackie and Sam are dog shadows
warm under my blanket. My cat shadows
all ran away.

My father’s shadow is the Wichita Lineman
belted to every creosoted pole, spurs buried
in the wood listening to his own static.

My streetlight shadows are Spirographed
around my shoes, each a different shade
of black. These are my mother.

As the sun falls into drowned ash,
these shades fade into twilight.
This is where we all used to hide.

When my face rises in your bright hands,
I hold your kiss
long enough for each of them
to have their turn.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Kristin Roedell at Angst Gallery November 12, 2015

October 23, 2015

Cover to Cover Flyer November 12 2015GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, November 12
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Food and libation provided by Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street

LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
angstgallery.com

With our featured reader, Kristin Roedell

Kristin RoedellKristin Roedell is a Northwest poet and retired attorney. Her work has appeared in over 50 journals and anthologies, including The Journal of the American Medical Association, Switched on Gutenberg, and CHEST. She is the author of Girls with Gardenias (Flutter Press) and Down River (Aldrich Press), a finalist for the Quercus Review Press poetry prize. She has twice been nominated for Best of the Web and once for the Pushcart Prize. She was the 2013 winner of NISA’s 11th Annual Brainstorm Poetry Contest and a finalist in the 2013 Crab Creek Review poetry contest.

Kristin Roedell in Poets & Writers

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic at Angst Gallery Featuring Sarah Webb October 8, 2015

September 14, 2015

Ghost Town Poetry Flyer October 8 2015GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, October 8

Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Food and libation provided by Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street

in the Vancouver Arts District

LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
christopherjluna@gmail.com
angstgallery.com

With our featured reader, Sarah Webb: A former Vancouverite, Sarah Webb now lives in the Texas Hill Country with her hound dog Rex, and reads frequently in Oklahoma and Texas. Her poetry collection Black (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013) was selected as a finalist for the 2014 Oklahoma Book Award and the 2014 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. She served as Poetry Editor for the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma’s interdisciplinary journal Crosstimbers for many years, and is presently a member of the editorial committee for All Roads Will Lead You Home and a co-editor of Just This, a magazine of the Zen arts.

black by sarah webbTwo poems by Sarah Webb:

The Altruism of Birds
By Sarah Webb

Ravens clamor the flock to a hidden feast
hark and hoot to show the way.
They share.
We’ll assume it’s for the usual reasons–
courting or potlatch
or the bullying strength of numbers.

Why are we surprised?
After all, people share
and often for no reason we can name.
Men share, and wolves share.
A raven may tip his wing to a hunter.
A badger may shelter a boy in his den.
A roadrunner adopted a man I knew.
The bird would bring him lizards
and grasshoppers,
lay them at his door as a cat might.

Once she brought the egg of a wren.

Once she came right up to the man
as he sat in the shade of his patio,
and she looked at him.

Her eye had that bird glint
that might mean anything–
pride in her prowess,
yearning for the touch of his beak
or delight in the glare of the sun
and the taste of snake
before it is given away.

Empty
By Sarah Webb

We start from the place that is empty.
Even in a mass of clay
there is that empty spot.

The thumb finds it
and follows its prompting,
presses out from it
and feels its yes
to widening.

From it bowls form
and rattles.

And in my chest
there is that empty spot
that widens with each breath
in a sweet yes.

I feel it press, press out,
but how to name what it forms?

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen/ Free Poetry Workshop at Vancouver Community Library September 10, 2015

August 14, 2015

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, September 10
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Food and libation provided by Niche Wine and Art Bar, 1013 Main Street

LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
printedmattervancouver.com
angstgallery.com

With our featured reader, Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen

Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen Photo by John Ulman
Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen Photo by John Ulman

Elizabeth Austen is the Washington State Poet Laureate for 2014-16. Her collection Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2011) was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her work is also available on the CD Skin Prayers and in two chapbooks. Elizabeth spent her teens and twenties working in the theatre and writing poems. A six-month solo walkabout in the Andes region of South America led her to focus exclusively on poetry. She earned an MFA in Poetry at Antioch University Los Angeles, and is the poetry commentator for NPR-affiliate KUOW 94.9. She makes her living at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where she also offers poetry and reflective writing workshops for the staff. For more information please visit http://wapoetlaureate.org/

Elizabeth Austen will also be teaching a generative writing workshop at the Vancouver Library the same afternoon:

Poetry for All
Thursday, September 10, 2015
2 – 4pm
Vancouver Community Library
Klickitat Room, Level 4

901 C St
Vancouver, WA 98660

Join Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen for a free, hands-on poetry workshop designed to engage participants’ imaginations, life histories and sense of empathy through language. The class includes close reading of a few contemporary poems, then using one as a model for writing our own first draft. No previous writing experience needed.

Library events and programs are free and although everyone is welcome, space is limited. Preregistration is required and closes Sept 9 at 5pm. Maximum 25 participants.

Poetry for All Workshop

Christopher Luna and Toni Partington’s Honeymoon Reading Tour of California (August 26, 27, 30)

August 8, 2015

Toni hand on Chris bw by Colin

Toni Partington and Christopher Luna

Photo by Colin Poellot

Clark County, WA Poet Laureate Christopher Luna and Toni Partington, co-hosts of the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA and co-founders of Printed Matter Vancouver, are celebrating their recent marriage with a honeymoon road trip and reading tour of California that will bring them to Monterey, San Francisco, and Berkeley. Christopher and Toni are very grateful to each of the event organizers for hosting them. They look forward to reading for old friends and making some new friends as they pass through. Each will have copies of their books and chapbooks for sale at the readings listed below.

Monterey

Rubber Chicken Poetry Slam and Open Mic
Featuring Newlyweds
Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
& Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington
On their Honeymoon Tour of California

7:30 pm
Wednesday, August 26
East Village Coffee Lounge
498 Washington St
Monterey, CA 93940
831-373-5601

Hosted by Garland Thompson Jr.

East Village Coffee Lounge

Facebook Event Page for Monterey Reading

San Francisco

Bird and Beckett four shot

Two-Tone Poetry & Jazz
CD LAUNCH PARTY!

David Meltzer & Julie Rogers
with Zan Stewart on Saxophone
and Clark County, Washington Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
& Printed Matter Vancouver Publisher Toni Partington

CD’s & books will be available!

Thurs., August 27 2015
7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

BIRD & BECKETT BOOKS AND RECORDS
653 Chenery St., San Francisco, CA in the Glen Park area
415-586-3733

Bird & Beckett Books and Records

Facebook Event Page for San Francisco Reading

MELTZER & ROGERS PR PHOTODavid Meltzer, celebrated SF Renaissance/Beat poet is a teacher & has published over forty books of poetry, fiction, and anthologies. This is his second poetry CD in 58 years. Meltzerville

Julie Rogers, northwest poet, is a writing coach & has published several chapbooks, a hospice manual & a selected, ‘House of the Unexpected’. This is her first poetry CD. Julie Rogers

Zan Stewart, tenor saxophonist & teacher, won the celebrated ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award. His band’s debut CD, ‘The Street Is Making Music’, is on Mobo Dog Records. Zan Stewart

Christopher Luna by Julian Nelson 2 November 2013

Christopher Luna is Clark County’s Poet Laureate, a teacher, co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver, and co-hosts Vancouver’s Ghost Town Poetry series. Poetry: Christopher Luna in Ghost Town, USA

Toni-Partington2009

Toni Partington is co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver, co-host of Ghost Town Poetry, and is an author, editor, writing coach, and artist.

Berkeley

California poets Neeli Cherkovski and Richard Loranger
join Christopher Luna and Toni Partington for their Honeymoon Reading Tour

Neeli Cherkovski
Richard Loranger
Christopher Luna
Toni Partington
+ a brief open mic

Hosted by Richard Loranger

Clark County, WA Poet Laureate Christopher Luna and Toni Partington, co-hosts of the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA are celebrating their recent marriage with a honeymoon road trip and reading tour of California that will bring them to Berkeley, Monterey, and San Francisco.

The late spoken word legend Jack McCarthy called Ghost Town Poetry “the best open mic between Tacoma and Berkeley.”

Sunday, August 30, 2015
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA

signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5-10 donation requested, no one turned away for lack of funds

Art House Gallery & Cultural Center
Neeli Cherkovski’s Facebook Page
Richard Loranger

Facebook Event Page for Berkeley Reading

PERFORMER BIOS

Neeli

Neeli Cherkovski has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and Charles Bukowski, with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. Cherkovski produced the first San Francisco Poetry Festival, and in the early-1990s helped to found Café Arts Month, a yearly event celebrating San Francisco’s cafe culture. Cherkovski is the author of Whitman’s Wild Children, a collection of essays about twelve poets he has known: Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Jack Micheline, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Cherkovski was a writer-in-residence at the New College of California in San Francisco. He taught literature and philosophy there until the school closed in 2008. His body of poetry includes Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Leaning Against Time, for which he was awarded the 15th Annual PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2005. Cherkovski’s papers are housed at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Loranger and Christopher Luna by Jane Ormerod November 17 2012

Richard Loranger and Christopher Luna in November 2012

Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, visual artist, and all around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the author of Poems for Teeth, as well as The Orange Book and nine chapbooks, including Hello Poems and the recent 6 Questions (Exot Books). Recent work can be found in Out of Our #17, in the anthology I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand (great weather for MEDIA), and in the online journals London Grip New Poetry (www.londongrip.co.uk) and The Marsh Hawk Review (www.marshhawkpress.org). You can find more about his work and scandals at http://www.richardloranger.com.

Clark County, WA Poet Laureate Christopher Luna is the co-founder, with Toni Partington, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press that serves Northwest writers. Together Luna and Partington edited Ghost Town Poetry volumes one and two, featuring poems from the popular open mic poetry reading series that Luna established in 2004. Luna’s books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight, GHOST TOWN, USA and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978. Recent publications include Bombay Gin, Unshod Quills, It’s Animal But Merciful, gape-seed, Take Out, Chiron Review, and Soundings Review. To learn more about Christopher Luna, please visit http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com.

Toni Partington lives and works as a poet, editor, publisher, visual artist, and writing coach in Vancouver, Washington. Toni has a B.A. in Social Work and an M.A. in Humanities with a focus on literature and literary editing. She is the author of two books of poetry, Jesus Is A Gas (2009), and Wind Wing (2010). Her poetry has been published in numerous journals including The Cascade Journal, VoiceCatcher (editions 3 and 4), OutwardLink.net, and Perceptions. She was Co-Editor for the 2011/2012 VoiceCatcher anthology of Pacific NW women writers. Toni is co-founder and editor of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing and small press imprint (www.printedmattervancouver.com). Toni co-hosts the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, a popular poetry reading series in Vancouver, WA founded by her husband Christopher Luna.

The Columbian acknowledges Printed Matter Vancouver’s Christopher Luna and the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in “Clark’s Growing Literary Community”

June 29, 2015

Had a great time at the Gallery 360 Book Fair. I used my New York voice to coax people onto the porch. So fun to be shouting in Vancouver, WA. You should try it some time, it’s good for the soul. Thank you to Peggy Bird for organizing this event and inviting me to participate. I really enjoyed hanging out on the porch of the Slocum House with authors Victoria Lindstrom and Kriston Johnson and gabbing with the people of Ghost Town about poetry and literature. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello and/or buy a few books: Lori Loranger, Bruce Hall, Karen Goysich Read, Rainy Knight, Christi Krug, Maureen Andrade, Jim Martin, Shawn Morrill, Erica Marchbank, Erin Dengerink, Angie Lindquist, and Ian Caton. We had perfect weather and an enormous crowd at the park. I hope that Gallery 360 decides to host more events like this in the future.

Peggy and Christopher at Gallery 360 Book Fair by Maureen Andrade
Gallery 360 Book Fair organizer and author Peggy Bird with Christopher Luna. Photo by Maureen Andrade for the Columbian

Many thanks to Maureen Andrade of North Bank Artists Gallery and the Columbian for this account of the event:

Clark County’s Growing Literary Community

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Herb Stokes at Angst Gallery May 14, 2015

April 12, 2015

Ghost Town Flyer May 14 2015

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, May 14
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

christopherjluna@gmail.com

Herb at GT December 11 2014 by Tiffany
Herb Stokes at Cover to Cover Books in December 2014 Photograph by Tiffany Burba-Schramm

Featuring Herb Stokes: Upon retirement from Swissair New York, Herb Stokes and his artist wife, Marianne, moved to the Intracoastal Waterway in North Carolina. They did the boat and beach scene for several years but after a wonderful summer trip to Portland decided the Northwest would be their home. He took an ongoing creative writing course at Clark College and hasn’t stopped writing since.

From “SALAD FOR TWO”
By Herb Stokes

We sat at a too small table
on a sun washed terrace
overlooking the Mediterranean
drinking wine from pewter goblets.

A blue haze was in the air
and in your eyes.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic at Angst Gallery celebrates National Poetry Month with a bilingual reading featuring Los Portenos founding member Cindy Williams Gutierrez Thursday, April 9

March 20, 2015

Ghost Town Flyer April 9 2015

Printed Matter Vancouver and Leah Jackson Present
GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Downtown in the Vancouver Arts District
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

7pm
April 9, 2015
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

With our Featured Reader Cindy Williams Gutierrez:

Cindy WIlliams Gutierrez poet

Cindy Williams Gutierrez

Photo by Russell J. Young

Selected by Poets and Writers Magazine as one of the top ten 2014 Debut Poets, poet-dramatist Cindy Williams Gutiérrez draws inspiration from the silent and silenced voices of history and herstory. Her poetry collection, the small claim of bones, was published by Arizona State University’s Bilingual Press. Poems and reviews have appeared in Borderlands, Calyx, Harvard’s Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Periódico de poesía, Portland Review, Quiddity, Rain Taxi, Rattle, and ZYZZYVA. Plays include Words That Burn, which premiered in Milagro’s 2014 La Luna Nueva festival to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month and the William Stafford Centennial, and A Dialogue of Flower & Song featured in the 2012 GEMELA (Spanish and Latin American Women’s Studies) Conference co-sponsored by the University of Portland and Portland State University.

Cindy earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program with concentrations in Mesoamerican poetics and creative collaboration. Cindy is a founding member of Los Porteños, Portland’s Latino writers’ collective, and the founder of Grupo de ’08, a Northwest collaborative-artists’ salon inspired by Lorca’s Generación de ’27.

Los Porteños is committed to making Latino and Latin American literature an integral part of the Portland community. We are dedicated to raising our voices and raising awareness of our diverse languages, canons, stories and cultures. We develop and nurture each unique voice into a collective of writers honoring this diverse heritage. Founded in 2006 with the steadfast support of Milagro Theatre, we have presented annual literary readings for Day of the Dead as well as participated in Milagro’s La Luna Nueva festival. In 2011, we began hosting a William Stafford Birthday Reading featuring original, multilingual poetry and prose written in response to Stafford poems.

2014 marked Los Porteños’ foray into community-building projects, including a Noche de Neruda reading at Literary Arts, a staged reading of Marrano Justice in collaboration with Congregation Ahavath Achim, and the production of Words That Burn in commemoration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the William Stafford Centennial, and the rescindment of Executive Order 9066. A dramatization of the World War II experiences of conscientious objector William Stafford, Japanese-American internee Lawson Inada, and Chicano Marine Guy Gabaldón, Words That Burn was supported by 20 community sponsors, including arts and humanities funders; Asian-American, Latino, and peace organizations; as well as universities and libraries. Recent collaborations featured Echoes Cabaret—in memory of “the disappeared”—with the Jewish Theatre Collaborative and Mujeres—in celebration of International Women’s Day—with Milagro.

Upcoming readings include Letters in Exile: William Stafford and Miguel Hernández at Literary Arts on Wednesday, May 13 at 7 pm.

If I Were a Nahua Poet

Make my body a cuicoyan, this house of song.
Garland my bones with those who have gone before, colli,
And the ones who have gone before them, colli. Return,
Return. Let the sweet wind be their breath on my shoulder,
Their tug on my tunic. Let my voice join the ancients
To swell the sky with a thousand plumes of light. Ehua!

And when the moon moves between sun and earth,
Let us remember to beat our deerskin drums and dance.
To pound our bare feet and chests until this holy earth
Splits in two, and volcanoes rise up in song. Only then
Will this life be worthy: to make the dark earth rumble,
And the heart fiercely tremble. Yolhuihuiyocaz, tremble.

By Cindy Williams Gutiérrez
From the small claim of bones, Bilingual Press, 2014.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic relocates to Angst Gallery with featured reader Nancy Flynn Thursday, February 12

January 18, 2015

Ghost Town Flyer February 12 2015

Printed Matter Vancouver and Leah Jackson Present
GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
In a new location
Downtown in the Vancouver Arts District
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660

Delicacies and libations provided by Niche Wine and Art Bar

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

christopherjluna@gmail.com

With our Featured Reader Nancy Flynn:

Nancy Flynn

Nancy Flynn grew up on the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania, spent many years on a downtown creek in Ithaca, New York, and now lives near the mighty Columbia in Northeast Portland. She attended Oberlin College in the 1970s, Cornell University in the 1980s, and got her MA in English/Creative Writing from SUNY Binghamton in 1994. A former university administrator, her writing has received an Oregon Literary Fellowship, the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. Recent poems have appeared in Gold Man Review, PANK, Posit, and Raven Chronicles; her latest chapbook is Eternity a Coal’s Throw. A complete list of her publications is available at www.nancyflynn.com.

Tide Table

Leadbetter Point, Willapa National Wildlife Refuge

beyond the edge of words a fading line
surrendered into silence syntax moved
directing where to stalk or pantomime
in semaphores the byways unimproved
beyond the edge of worlds a falling dream
that seeks to beach the tidal rising fast
past current rush through estuary sea
runs eeling too a salted push of grass
for refuge snowy plovers poised to lift
from mudflat nests gone boggy skyward hail
upended wintering down a calling cliff
beyond the edge of worth what loss unveils
inscription on the fly leaf constant no
ellipses still how much I do not know