Tag: open mic poetry

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC Featuring Risa Denenberg September 11, 2014

August 21, 2014

Cover to Cover Flyer September 11 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
And Printed Matter Vancouver Publisher Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, September 11
Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004
printedmattervancouver.com

Featuring Risa Denenberg:

Risa Denenberg

Risa Denenberg is an aging hippie living a solitary life in Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. She earns her keep as a nurse practitioner, having worked for many years in end-of-life care and more recently in chronic pain management. She is a moderator at The Gazebo, an online poetry board; reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing; and is an editor at Headmistress Press, dedicated to publishing lesbian poetry. She has three chapbooks, what we owe each other (The Lives You Touch Publications, http://www.thelivesyoutouch.com/touchjournal/Publications/Denenberg.html 2013); In My Exam Room (The Lives You Touch Publications, http://www.thelivesyoutouch.com/touchjournal/Publications/Denenberg2.html 2014); and blinded by clouds (Hyacinth Girls Press, 2014); and a full length book, Mean Distance from the Sun (Aldrich Press, http://www.amazon.com/Mean-Distance-Sun-Risa-Denenberg/dp/0615839665 2013). For more info, please visit: http://risadenaday.wordpress.com/

Mean Distance cover

Metanoia Lost

I speak god language
because people die
and god is the tongue of death.

Death stopped time, left me behind
my father with the small pot of raspberry jam
he ate with a spoon.

My story-line is a birth, a tooth-
ache, a marriage, a broken wrist, a custody war,
a death by fire.

It’s no different than yours—
a flash-memory in the shower,
a bruise without details.

Life offers tautologies—there is no god
but god. Have I ever considered conversion
or even slight faith?

There was no metanoia the day
I fell from grace and lost my name on the road.
Lost is an actual place, you know.

Risa Denenberg

http://vimeo.com/92423501

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Brittany Baldwin and Leah Noble Davidson Thursday, August 14, 2014

July 11, 2014

Cover to Cover Flyer August 14 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
And Printed Matter Vancouver Publisher Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, August 14
Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

Featuring Brittany Baldwin and Leah Noble Davidson:

Brittany Baldwin lives by a creek in rural Oregon with a dog, cat and some chickens. She has cooked professionally for 20 years and written poems since she was a child. She prefers the woods to anything else.

Leah Noble Davidson head shotLeah Noble Davidson in action

Leah Noble Davidson has enthusiasm up the wahoo. Her debut book, Poetic Scientifica (published through University of Hell Press), was Powell’s 3rd bestselling small press book of last year, and she currently produces Portland’s Moth StorySLAM. If you would like to see an example of Leah reading her work, take a look at Tiffany Burba-Schramm’s video from the Independent Publishing Resource Center on March 28, 2014: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ECXlm8I-zSg&autoplay=1

Square Nails
By Brittany Baldwin

I promised I wouldn’t write about us
to myself

even as I was watching you point your finger into the
door of your truck as it idled in the drive for the last time

you were saying something about
wanting your half of the money for the house

and I was watching how square your nails were,
trying to capture the corners of your hands and thinking
of all we did for each other all those days

all of the building as these hands came together

and they would never hold the other again

there would be a passing of money

inside a bank on a gray day

and then forever

Have
By Leah Noble Davidson

The depression begins with you fingering hand towels you can’t afford in a store you’ll never remember the name of because you’re consumed with how they remind you of the ones you dried the dishes with when you quit working to stay home with the baby while he started his career at the job that you got for him so he wouldn’t have to work nights at the bookstore, pretended to be him, wrote the résumé and answered the emails. You researched how to ace an interview, picked out and ironed his clothes.

He could buy you these towels if you hadn’t left because he threw you across the kitchen floor, told you how much you owed him, but that money is for flowers now, for a woman much prettier than you, someone he’s learned to be thankful for.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Willa Schneberg, Thursday, July 10, 2014

June 16, 2014

 

Flyer July 10 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
And Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, July 10
Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

Featuring Willa Schenberg, author of Rending the Garment:

headshot

Willa Schneberg has authored five poetry collections: In The Margins of The World (recipient of the Oregon Book Award in Poetry), Box Poems, Storytelling In Cambodia, the letterpress chapbook The Books of Esther (produced in conjunction with her interdisciplinary exhibit at the Oregon Jewish Museum, Fall 2012), and the recently released Rending the Garment (Mudfish/Box Turtle Press). Rending the Garment is a narrative tapestry encompassing persona poems, prose poems, flash fiction, imagined meetings with historical figures, ancestral appearances, and ephemera. This series of linked poems explores the life and times of one Jewish family. Willa lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon. For more info visit http://www.threewayconversation.org.

RendingtheGarment-Cover

WILLA’S HAIRS

After my sweatshirt comes out of the dryer
I find one on the sleeve.
Driving home from the mountains
one has attached to my ski pants.
When we awaken in the morning
one clings to my chest.
I wonder… after she is gone,
could my green-eyed one be made again
from a single long white hair.

 

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Emily Pittman Newberry Thursday, June 12, 2014

June 3, 2014

Cover to Cover Flyer June 12 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
And Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, June 12
Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004
printedmattervancouver.com

Featuring Emily Pittman Newberry:

Emily Newberry at Tiger Lily June 16 2013

Emily Pittman Newberry is a performance poet living in Portland, Oregon. She is fascinated by the way we dance with vulnerability as our lives intersect, and by how the rich diversity of life and the many paths we take somehow seem to lead us all home. OneSpirit Press published her two books of poetry, Butterfly A Rose and Nature Speaking, Naturally, a collaboration with artist Adelaide Beeman-White. An artist book featuring her poetry and the work of Portland artist Shu-Ju Wang will be released soon. Her website is www.wizense.com.

Grumbling
by Emily Pittman Newberry

I don’t like winter.

This matted cover
crunches underfoot.

This ice-choked stream
freezes ripples into dead stories.

This memory of yellow,
now withered, brown,
cracks rather than bends.

This wind I shiver against.

Until spring when I plant
the next seed.

Remember the winter
I needed,
to be reborn.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Daniel Skach-Mills May 8, 2014

April 18, 2014

Cover to Cover Flyer May 8 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
And Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, May 8
Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004
printedmattervancouver.com

Featuring Daniel Skach-Mills:

Daniel SM Photo

Daniel Skach-Mills is an award-winning poet, author, and a former Trappist monk. His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies ranging from Sufi magazine and The Journal of Daoist Philosophy and Practice to The Christian Science Monitor and Sojourners. Daniel’s books include: The Tao of Now (listed as one of the “150 outstanding Oregon poetry books” for Oregon’s 2009 sesquicentennial); The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems (a finalist for the 2012 Oregon Book Award); and In This Forest of Monks (a double finalist in both the Poetry and Spirituality categories of the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and lauded as “a powerful work that touches, delights, and amazes” by the judge of the 21st annual Writer’s Digest Book Awards). Manzou (a Chinese farewell that literally means: walk slowly) was published in January 2014. A docent for Lan Su Chinese Garden since 2005, Daniel lives with his partner of 21 years in Portland, Oregon.

Listening To The Waterfall
I Remember The Abbey Bell

Where in the waterfall’s cascading cadence
can you detect past or future?
Where in an ocean wave’s ebb and flow
can you glimpse a single mistake?
Snow embraces everything it touches.
Plum blossoms fall wherever wind decides.
Slowing down, you catch up to what I’m saying.
Speeding up, you fall behind.
The human world can drive you crazy
if you let it.  Be like a bell,
that fills the air with clarity
by emptying itself
of its own sound.

—from Manzou
by Daniel Skach-Mills

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Joyce Colson March 13

February 22, 2014

Cover to Cover Flyer March 13 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna

And Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington

7pm

March 13, 2014

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

 Featuring Joyce Colson:

Joyce Colson

Joyce Fiona Colson was born in 1948 and has spent most of her life writing. She started writing at age 12 and hasn’t stopped since. She writes mostly poetry, short stories and satire, although she has also written non-fiction, four novels and one radio play. Joyce owns her own publishing company, Eclectic Publishing, and is otherwise semi-retired.

Joyce Colson’s poetry is featured in Ghost Town Poetry Volume Two, and anthology of poems from the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic published in January by Printed Matter Vancouver. Ghost Town Poetry Volume Two is available locally at Cover to Cover Books: mail@covertocoverbooks.net.

The book can also be ordered through CreateSpace (https://www.createspace.com/4559411) and Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Town-Poetry-Volume-Two/dp/0615938892/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390333629&sr=8-1&keywords=ghost+town+poetry+volume+two).

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Gwendolyn Morgan and the Book Release Party for Ghost Town Poetry Volume Two at Cover to Cover Books in Vancouver, WA February 13, 2014

January 12, 2014

Cover to Cover Flyer February 13 2014

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna

And Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington

 

7pm

February 13, 2014

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

printedmattervancouver.com

 

Gwendolyn MorganPhoto by Kim Salgado

Winner of the 2013 Wild Earth Poetry Prize, Gwendolyn Morgan’s first collection, Crow Feathers, Red Ochre, Green Tea ($14), offers richly textured poetic renderings of natural landscapes and emotional nuances in response to those landscapes. She weaves concerns for global warming, social inequities, and health care together with images of birds, plants, animals, breath, evoking our interconnectedness with all sentient beings and the spiritual universe. There is in these poems a deep sense of care for and rootedness in the natural world. Gwendolyn Morgan learned the names of birds and wildflowers and inherited paint brushes and boxes from her grandmothers. With a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College, and a M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary, she has been a recipient of writing residencies at Artsmith, Caldera and Soapstone. Morgan’s poems appear in Calyx, Dakotah, Kalliope, Kinesis, Manzanita Quarterly, Mudfish, Tributaries: a Journal of Nature Writing, VoiceCatcher, Written River among other anthologies and literary journals. She is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Society for Community Ministries and is a board certified chaplain with the Association of Professional Chaplains. She serves as the manager of interfaith Spiritual Care at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center. Gwendolyn and Judy A. Rose, her partner, share their home with Abbey Skye, a rescued Pembroke Corgi. Judy, who is a musician, will be offering Native American flute during the reading. For more information: http://hiraethpress.com/crow-feathers-red-ochre-green-tea-now-available/

 

Ghost Town Poetry Volume Two commemorates ten years of open mic poetry in Vancouver, WA. Christopher Luna founded the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic reading series at Ice Cream Renaissance in November 2004. In 2007 the series moved to Cover to Cover Books, and Toni Partington joined Luna as a co-host. In 2011 Luna and Partington co-founded Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press which previously published Ghost Town Poetry, which includes poets from the first six years of the series, and Serenity in the Brutal Garden, the debut collection by Vancouver poet Jenney Pauer. Like its namesake, Ghost Town Poetry Volume Two is “all ages and uncensored.” The anthology includes poems from the following local and national authors, each of whom has read at the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic: Judith Arcana, Elizabeth Archers, Lana Ayers, Melinda Bell, Kristin Berger, April Bullard, Tiffany Burba-Schramm, Sheryl Clough, Ed Coletti, Joyce Colson, Brittney Corrigan, Michael Daley, Eileen Davis Elliott, Kathleen Flenniken, Daniel Gilchrist, Rob Gourley, Johnna Gurgel, Miles Hewitt, David Hill, Rainy Knight, Christi Krug, Jake Loranger, Lori Loranger, Zoe Loranger, Jack Lorts, Peter Ludwin, Christopher Luna, M, David Madgalene, Dryas Martin, Jim Martin, Doug Marx, David Matthews, Dennis McBride, Jack McCarthy, Mike G, A. Molotkov, Russell Monroe, Angeline Nguyen, Maggie O’Mara, Toni Partington, Jenney Pauer, Jennifer Pratt-Walter, Sidra Grace Quinn, Dan Raphael, Carlos Reyes, Kristin Roedell, Michael Rothenberg, Ralph Salisbury, Katharine Salzmann, Raul Sanchez, Mary Slocum, Gerald Donnelly Smith, Leah Stenson, Meredith Stewart, George Thomas, Nathan Tompkins, Grace Valentine, Ric Vrana, Julene Weaver, Ingrid Wendt, Steve Williams, John Sibley Williams, Sally Wong, Carolyne Wright, and Louise Wynn.  

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Maggie Chula Thursday, November 14, 2013

November 2, 2013

Flyer November 14 2013

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted by Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna

and Printed Matter Vancouver founder Toni Partington

 

November 14, 2013

7pm

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd.,

Suite 104B

(St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA

98663

 christopherjluna@gmail.com

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages,

and uncensored since 2004

 With our featured reader, Maggie Chula:

Maggie Chula has been writing and teaching haiku, tanka, and haibun for more than thirty years. She has published seven full-length poetry collections as well as a musical CD of Grinding my ink. Called the ‘Haiku Queen of Portland’ by the Willamette Week, her haiku have appeared in journals worldwide, on Tokyo train station billboards, at a construction site for the Orange Line in Portland, and on cans of Itoen tea sold in vending machines in Japan. Her latest book, Just This, is her second collection of tanka. Maggie has just finished a three-year appointment as Poet Laureate for Friends of Chamber Music, composing poems while listening to concerts. She currently serves as President of the Tanka Society of America. Living in Kyoto for twelve years, she now makes her home in Portland where she hikes, gardens, swims, and creates flower arrangements for every room of the house.

TANKA

you sign your letters

‘affectionately’

I write ‘loving you’

picking a scab in my cleavage

I watch it bleed

Maggie Chula

Books available at the reading:

Just This                                                                      $16.00

Just This translation                                                  $12.00

What Remains:

Japanese Americans in Internment Camps             $20.00 (discounted from $25)

Grinding my ink                                                         $15.00 (discounted from $16.95)

The Smell of Rust                                                      $12.00 (discounted from $14.95)

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic at Cover to Cover Books featuring Rob Gourley and klipschutz Thursday October 10, 2013

September 20, 2013

October 10 2103 flyer

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted by Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna

and Printed Matter Vancouver founder Toni Partington

October 10, 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 readers, Rob Gourley and klipschutz:

 Rob Gourley APR '13 copy

Rob Gourley taught language arts, human relations, and career development in Washington schools (1974-90) and has had Teamster employment for 19 years in the intermodal transportation facilities for automobiles (import/export) at Portland’s Terminal 6 and the Port of Vancouver. His development as a writer grows out of years of reading and a motivation to learn to write documents well via journal & letter writing, storytelling, writing grant proposals, monitoring reports & psychological abstracts, etc. – also travel, immersion in moments. Recently, he realized his admiration of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales may be a significant influence on his longer narrative stories in verse. These last 30 years, Rob’s geographic range has been along the Columbia Gorge and out to the Pacific Coast, following his interests in swimming, hiking, canoeing, photography, music, skiing, bicycling, ecology, and so forth.  He will have three chapbooks available for sale at the reading: Degrees of Freedom ($4), Four Drafts from Skinflint’s HP Pavilion ($2), and Directions ($4).

klipschutz-Photo

Klipschutz (pen name of Kurt Lipschutz) is a poet and songwriter. His new book is This Drawn & Quartered Moon. Born in Indio, California, he has lived in San Francisco for thirty years, where he shares an apartment with his wife, Colette Jappy, and two cats. His work has appeared in periodicals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and France, and numerous anthologies, and in previous collections including Twilight of the Male Ego, The Good Neighbor Policy, and The Erection of Scaffolding for the Re-Painting of Heaven by the Lowest Bidder. He has co-penned over a hundred songs, chiefly with Chuck Prophet, including the internationally acclaimed 2012 release Temple Beautiful. Beyond high school, he is an autodidact. The following books will be available for sale at the reading: This Drawn & Quartered Moon ($18), Twilight of the Male Ego ($12), and The Good Neighbor Policy ($8).

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic with Stephanie Lenox and Miles Hewitt at Angst Gallery for one night only August 8, 2013

July 24, 2013

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Note: The Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, which has taken place at Cover to Cover Books in Vancouver since 2007, will take place at Angst Gallery on August 8 because the bookstore is unavailable that night. The series will return to Cover to Cover Books on September 12.

Cover to Cover Flyer August 8 2013

Contact: Christopher Luna

360-910-1066

christopherjluna@gmail.com

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Printed Matter Vancouver

& Leah Jackson present

 GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

August 8, 2013

7pm

in a special location!

Angst Gallery

(1013 Main St., Vancouver)

 

With your hosts

Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna

and Printed Matter Vancouver founder Toni Partington

 

Experience the power & magic of words

Performed with unbridled enthusiasm

All ages and uncensored

Food and drink available for purchase

from Niche Wine and Art Bar

Featuring Stephanie Lenox and Miles Hewitt

Lenox

Information about Stephanie Lenox from Airlie Press.org: Stephanie Lenox’s inventive debut collection Congress of Strange People entices readers into a “federation of freaks” with voice-driven poems that sing a collective ode to our common strangeness. Employing humor, mystery, and a bold yet generous gaze, this book keeps company with a snake handler and conspiracy theorist, record-holders from The Guinness Book, Miss Manners, human cannonballs, Nancy Drew, and other characters from a family of outcasts.

The poet lives in Salem, Oregon, with her husband and two daughters. She teaches poetry at Willamette University and edits the online literary journal Blood Orange Review. She is the author of The Heart That Lies Outside the Body, an award-winning poetry chapbook published by Slapering Hol Press. Her work has appeared widely in literary journals and has been honored with fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Oregon Arts Commission as well as numerous nominations for the Pushcart Prize.

For more information, please visit her website at http://www.stephanielenox.com.

Miles Hewitt is an eighteen-year-old writer of many mediums from Vancouver, Washington. He spends his days crafting poems, songs, and status messages, recording albums in dimly-lit basements, and ruminating. His self-recorded album Empire will be released on August 10th, 2013, at Niche Wine and Art Bar. Recently, he was selected as one of five National Student Poets for the 2012-2013 year by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, won a National Silver Medal for poetry at the 2012 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and serves as a poetry reader for the Adroit Journal, a writing and art magazine managed exclusively by high schoolers and college undergraduates. Miles is considering a career in political communications or speechwriting if the “rock-and-roll-poet” line of business doesn’t pan out. He will attend Harvard University in the fall.