Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Risa Denenberg at Angst Gallery July 12, 2018

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic flyer July 12 2018 cropped

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Risa Denenberg

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington of Printed Matter Vancouver

7 pm

Thursday, July 12

Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7 sharp

Angst Gallery

1015 Main Street

Vancouver, WA 98660

Risa 38

Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state where she works as a nurse practitioner. She reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing and is a co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, publisher of LBT poetry. She has published three chapbooks and three full length collections of poetry, including Whirlwind @ Lesbos (Headmistress Press, 2016) and  slight faith (MoonPath Press, 2018).

 

slightfiath-frontcov-withbleed

Abiding Winter 

by Risa Denenberg

How we made it through another winter’s

not the question. Nor is it an answer

since one of us was left behind in winter.

 

In Spring, in buoyancy, you asked a question.

Cups stood their ground between us, tea and coffee.

You wished to be the answer to your question.

 

Then winter comes again and yet another,

a darkling season full of melancholy. The yanking

of my soul back to the gutter, that other

 

place where questions have no answers,

and answers only placate. It takes rafters

of steadfast faith, or mettle, to seek answers.

 

Truth is brutal. So much we can’t recover,

years I’ve begged for you to wait for Spring to bloom

again, living in despair beside each other, and another

 

stormy season while we tussle for an answer

or a coda to the sum of all of life’s bother.

I’ve learned to hold my tongue, to question

nothing. Questions are another sort of winter.

 

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

Sound provided by Briz Loan & Guitar

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

Listen to a feature on Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic on OPB Radio’s State of Wonder

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Peter Ludwin March 8, 2018

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic flyer March 8 2018

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Featuring Peter Ludwin

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington of Printed Matter Vancouver

7 pm

Thursday, March 8

Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7

Angst Gallery

1015 Main Street

Vancouver, WA 98660

angstgallery.com

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

Sound provided by Briz Loan & Guitar: http://briz.us/

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

christopherjluna@gmail.com

Peter's Pictures 006

Peter Ludwin is the recipient of a Literary Fellowship from Artist Trust and the W.D. Snodgrass Award for Endeavor and Excellence in Poetry.  His first book, A Guest in All Your Houses, was published in 2009 by Word Walker Press.  His second collection is Rumors of Fallible Gods, a two-time finalist for the Gival Press Poetry Award that was published in 2013 by Presa Press.

His new book, Gone to Gold Mountain, was published in 2016 by MoonPath Press and subsequently nominated for a Washington State Book Award.  In May, 2017 the Before Columbus Foundation nominated it for an American Book Award.

A fourteen-year participant in Mexico’s San Miguel Poetry Week, where he has studied under such noted poets as Mark Doty, Tony Hoagland, Joseph Stroud and Robert Wrigley, Ludwin was the Second Prize winner of the 2007-2008 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards.  In 2010 Soundings Review named him its Reader’s Choice winner in the spring/summer issue.

Most recently, he was the 2016 First Prize winner of The Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, the Second Place winner of the 2016 Paulann Petersen Poetry Award, and a finalist in poetry for both the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards and the Pangaea Poetry Prize.   A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, he received nominations in 2016 from MoonPath Press and Connecticut River Review.

His work has appeared in many journals, including Atlanta Review, The Bitter Oleander, The Comstock Review, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod, North American Review and Prairie Schooner, to name a few.  A world traveler who has journeyed by canoe to visit remote Indian families in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador, hiked in the Peruvian Andes, thumbed for rides in Greece, bargained for goods in the markets of Marrakech and Istanbul and survived debilitating illness in China and Tibet, he is also accomplished on acoustic guitar and autoharp.  He lives in Kent, Washington, where he works for the Parks Department.

 

 

 

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Raul Sanchez June 13, 2013

Cover to Cover Flyer June 13 2013

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

June 13, 2013

7pm

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd.,

Suite 104B

(St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA

 christopherjluna@gmail.com

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages,

and uncensored since 2004

 

With our featured reader, Raul Sanchez:

Raul head shot_7

Raúl Sánchez conducts workshops on The Day of the Dead. He was a featured in the 2011 Burning Word Poetry Festival. An avid collector of poetry books and self-proclaimed “thrift store junkie,” Sanchez volunteers as a DJ for KBCS 91.3 FM on the Saturday music shows Sabor! and Al Lado Latino. His most recent work is the translation of John Burgess’ Punk Poems in his book Graffito and his ardent inaugural collection All Our Brown-Skinned Angels, published by MoonPath Press in Kingston, WA. Filled with poems of cultural identity, familial and personal, civil protest, personal celebration, and passion, his book has been nominated for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry for 2013.

Raul Sanchez Book Cover

Breath

By Raul Sanchez

At day’s end we try to remain bright

speak colorfully, for words

are like the clothes we wear

we wear them on our tongues

Raul Sanchez Teotihuacan 2012Raul Sanchez at Teotihuacan 2012