Matthew Eiford-Schroeder and Christopher Luna would like to thank everyone who attended our reading on February 2. We are very grateful to Candace and the rest of the staff at Vintage Books for being so hospitable. Both Matthew and Christopher have additional readings lined up for this year. Please visit our Events page for more information.
Printed Matter Vancouver co-founder Christopher Luna was recently featured on People of Vancouver, WA:
Christopher would like to thank Steve and Emily for this wonderful video. He is also grateful to Leah Jackson for her many years of support for The Work and Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. Finally, a hearty shout out to those who attended the workshop at Niche that afternoon (and appear briefly in the video): Stella Guillory, Diane Corson, Denise Campbell, Suzanne LaGrande, Robert Syverson, Paula John, Cathie Padgett, Sonja Gellerson, and Bruce Hall.
Here is the text which accompanies the video on the People of Vancouver WA YouTube Channel:
Christopher Luna is a poet, teacher, editor and was the first Poet Laureate for Clark County. He has been hosting Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, since 2004, and we caught up with him at his writing workshop, also known as The Work, which is held on the second Saturday of every month at Niche Wine Bar on Main St.
“The name for the workshop comes from a couple of lines in a poem by Allen Ginsberg called Memory Gardens, where he says ‘What is the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.’ I interpret that as let’s, as poets, in a culture where our work is not always completely understood or respected, let’s take it seriously enough to look at it as work. I think there are some people, even other writers, who don’t see poetry as work because they tend to be shorter than novels. I want to encourage poets in the workshop to own being a poet. To have fun, but to take the work seriously.”
Ginsberg himself co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, where Luna earned an MFA in Writing and Poetics. It was there that Luna learned about outreach, developing writing workshops and going out into the community to teach. After becoming Clark County’s first Poet Laureate, he launched the Poets in the Schools Program, which continues sends writers into local educational settings to lead poetry workshops to this day.
For more information about Christopher Luna’s coaching and editing services, Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, or The Work, visit https://printedmattervancouver.com/
Music: Bass Walker – Film Noir by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…😉
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-…
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna of Printed Matter Vancouver
Featuring Tim Whitsel
7 pm
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7
FREE
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
Tim Whitsel believes in the power of dogwood blossoms. He may have migrated west on a solitary bicycle at the age of nineteen. He remembers the cheekbones of the first girl he kissed. He studied with David Waggoner, James Welch and Stanley Plumly at the University of Washington. For six years he curated the Windfall Reading Series at the Eugene Public Library. His poem “Mudflat Allure” won first prize at the 2013 Northwest Poets’ Concord. We Say Ourselves appeared in 2012 from Traprock Books and Airlie Press published his full-length collection Wish Meal in 2016.
GRIMACE
A cabin on a snowy river made
lonelier by threadbare conifers.
French doors, three glass teeth
facing the direction of the storm.
Everyone is away for the day.
Cinching their ballcaps snug
for a comfort they don’t feel.
Blowing on their hands one at a
time so their placards don’t fall.
Follow the Money, Hear ME
unwilling to be fenced like cattle
or fly south like trumpeter swans.
Tim Whitsel
May 10, 2018
Are you ready to take control of your writing goals? Do you have a manuscript that needs polishing before being submitted for publication? Printed Matter Vancouver can help. We are accepting new clients now.
2018 was a great year for Printed Matter Vancouver. We had the privilege of working with an impressive group of creative individuals at various stages in their writing journey. We are humbled by their grace, talent, and perseverance. They entrusted us with their precious poems, essays, stories, fiction, articles, and commentary. We provided guidance, editing, formatting assistance, critique, and revision. Witnessing the growth and commitment of these writers is incredibly satisfying. To say this year has been astounding would be an understatement. We are grateful to those who have put their trust in us. These inspiring individuals have an unflinching determination to do the work that is necessary to grow and improve as a writer.
If you are considering working with an editor, compiling a chapbook, or further developing your writing skills, contact us for an initial consultation at no cost to you. We can be reached via printedmattervancouver@gmail.com. Let’s explore your writing together!
With sincere appreciation to all for a great year,
Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna
Here are a few of the projects we worked on during 2018:
• Editing and formatting a debut book of poetry.
• Editing of a historical memoir.
• Critique, review, and editing of a significant collection of poetry.
• Editing Book #1 of a fiction series.
• Editing a full-length book of haiku.
• Coaching a poet mining decades of journals to create a series of chapbooks.
Flowstone Press announces the release of Message from the Vessel in a Dream by Christopher Luna, Clark County, WA’s first poet laureate (2013-2017) and the founder of Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic.
Luna’s first full-length volume of poetry contains work spanning 20 years, and favors prose poetry and collage poems assembled and arranged using found material. The book is dedicated to Carlos Santana, the guitar virtuoso and eponymous “vessel” who gifted Luna with the only line of poetry he has ever received from a dream.
Order Message from the Vessel in a Dream.
How many Christopher Lunas are there? The bard, the community dynamo, the scholar, the compassionate one, the jazz quartet, the father & lover, the world of a man: all and more are speaking in this book. So many perspectives to experience here, so much to learn about literature, attitude, action and beauty. The maestro of Ghost Town has created a bustling, radiant and necessary environment. — Dan Raphael
Christopher Luna served as Clark County, WA’s first Poet Laureate from 2013-2017. He has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press for Northwest writers. He and Lumbrazo Luna co-host Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, the popular Vancouver, WA reading series he founded 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.
Collage Art by Christopher Luna for Message from the Vessel in a Dream
Read “Message from a Teeming Mind,” an article about Christopher Luna and Message from the Vessel in a Dream by Scott Hewitt for the Columbian.
Christopher Luna would like to thank all the people, living or dead, whose words provided material for the poems in this book. He would especially like to thank the poets and friends whose words (before, during, and after reading their work at the mic) offered such inspiration: Lynn Alexander, Jane Arnal, Elizabeth Austen, Brittany Baldwin, Roxanne Bash, Kristin Berger, Alex Birkett, Holly Black, Sari Breznau, Tiffany Burba, Barbara Lynn Cantone, J’Lyn Chapman, Sage Cohen, Darlene Costello, Walt Curtis, Leah Noble Davidson, Rene Denfeld, Natalie Diaz, Liz Donley, Josh Ehrdal, Matt Eiford, Terri Eliof, Eileen Elliott, Barbara Engel, Annette Ernst, Kathleen Flenniken, Michelle Fredette, Mike G (Michael Guimond), Rhonda Grace, Samuel Green, Jack Greene, Michelle Giuliano, Dean Haspiel, Miles Hewitt, Morgan Hutchinson, Vishal Khanna, Kevin Killian, Sabra Patricia Larsen, Rosemary Leary, Edee Lemonier, Robin Coste Lewis, Lori Loranger, Angelo Luna, Ben Scott Luna, Cathleen Luna, Dan Luna, Greg Luna, Jae Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, Tod Marshall, Doug Marx, Alec Matthews, Dennis McBride, Marianela Medrano, Matt Meighan, David Meltzer (RIP), Kristopher Molina, Livia Montana, Judith Montgomery, Gwendolyn Morgan, Dan Nelson, Gwen Osborne, Aaron Pacora, Eric Padget, Jenney Pauer, David James Randolph, Dan Raphael, Yugen Rashad, Karen Read, Shelby Reece, Donna Roberge, Katharine Salzmann, Darcy Scholts, Laura Sciortino, Daniel Skach-Mills, Michael Smoler, Shawn Sorensen, Rob Sparks, Bill Sterr, John Stevens, Herb Stokes, Gary F. Suda, Grace Valentine, RicVrana (RIP), Julene Tripp Weaver, Paul Yates, and Lidia Yuknavitch.
message from the vessel in a dream
completely still
seemingly emotion-
less yet blowing
notes to charm
succeeding ages
it matters little
whether one studies
flow or counterpoint
so long as eventually
the instrument is raised to the lips
you make your appearance
known through some creator
neither Duke nor Trane
ever revealed the source
a wisdom too precious
to put a name to
something not unlike the sound of the heart
beating in the chest of your firstborn
listen to the wind
as interpreted
remember how his hips’
involuntary Poughkeepsie shimmy
show’d you how it was done
never forget promises made
in the quiet of the early morning
priorities set straight
a brick wall stared down till dawn
experience cool breeze adrenaline release
and never forget you learned to listen
don’t forget to breathe
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna of Printed Matter Vancouver
Featuring VoiceCatcher poets Claudia F. Savage and Deborah Brink Wöhrmann
7 pm
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7
FREE
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660
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
Claudia F. Saleeby Savage is part of the performance duo Thick in the Throat, Honey and co-runs a parent-artist podcast of the same name. Her most recent book of poetry is Bruising Continents. Other recent work appears in BOMB, Denver Quarterly, Columbia, Nimrod, Water-Stone Review, and Anomaly (the interview series “Witness the Hour: Arab American Poets Across the Diaspora”). She is a 2018-2021 Black Earth Institute Fellow, a progressive think tank. Her collaboration, reductions, about motherhood and ephemerality with visual artist Jacklyn Brickman, is forthcoming in 2020. She teaches privately and as a Writer in the Schools and lives with her husband and daughter in Portland.
My Daughter Discovers Synchronicity
Claudia F. Saleeby Savage
If you cannot keep that smell of rosemary on your palms, tea warm in your
morning mug, or stop your daughter’s howl when the soup bowl tips, swallow
this sorrow and spit out birds. My daughter gulps air to better voice her throat’s
vibration. Her belly’s taut drum. The contours of my face mountain under
her gaze. Outside a woodpecker searches for rot in a telephone pole. Her
fingers enter the belly button. A world tucked in worlds tucked in worlds.
In mine there are borders of guns. Refusals. A veil could mean your children
starve…
Deborah Brink Wöhrmann marvels at the body’s way of responding to thought and word and the mind’s way of speaking what the body feels and says. After years of teaching writing and such, she now weaves bodywork, nutritional studies and small-group creative workshops into her North Portland life. She loves to wander in the woods and along beaches, to garden, cook and to explore.
Excerpt from “Sunset”
for M.E.W.
You taught me the art
of opening windows
at just the right hour
closing them again
before heat
swept in.
Follow your bliss in the new year. Take a writing workshop with Christopher Luna.
Christopher has an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where he received training in literary community outreach from Jack Collom, and two decades of teaching experience. He served as the Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA from 2013-2017. In 2004 he founded the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, which he co-hosts with his wife Toni Partington. Christopher and Toni co-founded Printed Matter Vancouver, which publishes local poetry and provides coaching and editing services to Northwest writers.
Darlene Zimbardi had the following comments about her experience in Christopher’s poetry and memoir writing classes: “I love taking classes with Christopher. From the moment you walk into the room, you see and feel his passion for literature. His zest transfers to his students. It doesn’t matter where you are on your writing path, he encourages and challenges you. Christopher holds a safe space for writers to share their work.”
Rae Latham, a writer in Christopher’s Monday morning workshop at Multnomah Arts Center, comments: “Christopher is the poetry alchemist who helps us discover gold.”
Below you will find several creative writing workshops throughout the region sponsored by Multnomah Arts Center, Clark College, Niche Wine Bar, and Angst Gallery. Hope you can join us.
Contact printedmattervancouver@gmail.com or christopherjluna@gmail.com for more information.
7688 SW CAPITOL HWY • PORTLAND, OR 97219 • 503-823-2787 • FAX 503-865-3487
Poetry Writing
Age 16 & up
Explore poetry as a means of expression, discovery, and generating compassion. Write poetry in response to prompts and read a variety of published poems that you can use as
inspiration. Read and respond to one another’s work in this supportive setting, paying close attention to revision.
M 10:00am-12:30pm 1/7-3/11
$200 [8 Classes] 1095189 Christopher Luna
M 1:00-3:30pm 1/7-3/11
$200 [8 Classes] 1100629 Christopher Luna
Memoir Writing
Everyone has a story to tell. Each person’s life is filled with adventure, mystery, trouble, and triumph. Memoir is a powerful way to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all human beings. See yourself as a part of history, documenting the story of your life.
Downtown Campus
9312
Tuesdays 1/8/2019- 3/12/2019
1:00PM- 3:20PM
$259
CCE 208
Downtown Campus
9311
Thursdays 1/10/2019- 3/14/2019
1:00PM- 3:20PM
$259
CCE 208
THE WORK
“Well, while I’m here I’ll do the work — and what’s the work?
To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.”
― Allen Ginsberg, from “Memory Gardens” (Fall of America, City Lights)
The Work is a drop-in poetry writing workshop for beginners as well as more experienced writers. Beginning in January 2019, we will meet three times per month: on the second Saturday afternoon of each month at Niche Wine Bar, and the second and fourth Monday evening at Angst Gallery, unless otherwise noted. Please check Facebook for more frequent updates.
Saturday Afternoons
Join us on Saturday, January 12 for The Work, a monthly poetry writing workshop at Niche Wine Bar led by Christopher Luna.
Poetry encourages empathy and compassion, and sparks the shifts in consciousness which can lead to healing, personal growth, and an interest in fighting for progressive social change. I look forward to sharing my passion for poetry with you.
We will read and discuss poetry, and write several new poems together from 11:30 until 2:30.
Niche is located at 1013 Main Street, right next door to The Kiggins Theatre, Vancouver’s landmark movie house in the Vancouver Arts District.
$20 suggested donation; no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Bring a poem to share as a way of saying hello.
Shareable snacks are also welcome and very much appreciated.
Upcoming Saturday afternoon workshops will take place on February 9, March 2, April 13, and May 11.
Second and Fourth Monday Evenings (beginning in January 2019)
The Work will also take place at Angst Gallery (1015 Main Street) from 6 – 8:30 on the second and fourth Monday of each month, unless otherwise noted.
Upcoming 2019 Monday evening workshops will take place on January 14 & 28, February 11 & 25, March 11 & 25, April 15 & 29, May 13, June 10 & 24.
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington of Printed Matter Vancouver
Featuring Genève/Geneva Chao
Author of émigré
7 pm
Thursday, October 11
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7
FREE
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
Genève/Geneva Chao is the author of three books of poetry and several translations. Chao lives in Los Angeles. Her books include one of us is wave one of us is shore (French/English), Hillary Is Dreaming (English), and émigré (English/French/guernesiais/pidgin).
Hoku
with winds
comme des
through channels
fourmis on
sifting sand
grimpe les uns
into glass, every
sur les autres
chamber packed
se hissent
tight with bodies
jusqu’aux toits
in boxes in alleys
afin de voir
finally to climb
enfin la lueur
to see stars
des étoiles
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington of Printed Matter Vancouver
Featuring Reggie Marra, Connecticut Poet and author of Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence and Greed
7 pm
Thursday, September 13
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7
FREE
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660
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
Reggie Marra is the author of four books of poetry and four of nonfiction, including And Now, Still: Grave & Goofy Poems and Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence and Greed. He has conducted poetry-writing and adult development and healing workshops since 1997, including work with the NEA’s Poetry Out Loud program, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, the Connecticut Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Schools program, the Transformative Language Arts Network, Teleosis Institute, the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, HealingNewtown, the National Speakers Association and in schools throughout the northeastern United States. Reggie is an Integral Master Coach,™ a Voice Dialogue practitioner through Bridgit Dengel Gaspard, and Nature Based Soulcraft® practitioner, through Bill Plotkin and Animas Valley Institute. Prior to 1997 he spent 21 years as a teacher, basketball coach and administrator in secondary and higher education. Learn more at www.reggiemarra.com.
EARLY AUTUMN SOUTHWEST EVENING
The music stops.
The young women holding hands,
their tank tops, shorts, boots, long
flowing brown hair, and the young
man in a black tee, blue jeans and
boots to their right, capture a neon-
backlit American summer evening.
They run, semi-crouched, amid
food and beverage containers
strewn across the open space while
those behind them kneel, crawl,
crouch and cower along the fence,
unsure where the shooter is and
when the shooting will stop.
If ever.
From Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence and Greed.
Killing America: Our United States of Ignorance, Fear, Bigotry, Violence and Greed is Reggie Marra’s fourth book of poems. As with his This Open Eye: Seeing What We Do (2006), Marra unflinchingly sees, writes and shares with the reader verbal snapshots of his country’s late 20th- and early 21st-century culture of violence as it manifests at home and abroad. His poems both grieve slaughtered school children, unarmed black men, ambushed law enforcement officers, church-, concert- and movie-goers, military veterans and victims of American foreign policy violence in the Middle East, and indict the leaders who refuse to act amid, or implicitly condone, the ongoing slaughter.
ISBN: 978-0-9627828-8-6
135 pages | 6×9 paper
Cover Art: Whose Heaven? by Ray DiCapua Charcoal and ink on paper | 48” x 72” Copyright © 2003 by Ray DiCapua
Go to Amazon in September: https://www.amazon.com/Reggie-Marra/e/B00AECM6OM
Approximately 546 copies of this book will be sent to the September 2018 occupants of the United States Senate, House of Representatives, Supreme Court and White House. We’ll be raising money to do that: https://www. gofundme.com/poems-for- politicians-in-dc
Ongoing updates and poem excerpts at: https://killing-america.com/
Narrative Healing: Transcending the Illness Narrative Workshop with Reggie Marra
6:30 – 9:00pm
Friday, September 14
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660
Cost: $35
RSVP to christopherjluna@gmail.com by Thursday, September 13
Narrative Healing: Transcending the Illness Narrative
“It is true that the mind is restless and difficult to control, but it can be conquered… through regular practice and detachment” (6.35) – The Bhagavad Gita, c. 500-200 BCE.
The power of story to heal was understood 2,000 years ago. We now have over 30 years of research that confirms this philosophical, intuitive understanding. This workshop will engage you in your own narrative healing process, introduce the salient history, philosophy and research, and prepare you to write and revise your story from a salutogenic, rather than pathogenic, perspective. Deepen your abilities to embrace your own healing and nurture that of your clients, patients, students or loved ones. Find out: do you have your story – or does your story have you?
Whether you are navigating your own personal healing, coming to terms with the ongoing cultural and societal healing that is necessary to address American violence at home and abroad, or the larger global issues of pain and suffering, story matters. Your narrative impacts what you see, how you see and what you can do next. Join us on ….. for an experiential introduction to narrative healing.
Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to present Consistently East, the debut volume of poetry by Camas, WA native Matthew Eiford-Schroeder.
Order your copy of Consistently East today!
Advance Praise for Consistently East
“If art is animated by the shock of the new, Matthew Eiford-Schroeder has presented the reader with a top grade set of jumper cables. Consistently East is a startlingly good and often brilliant book of poems, one that makes harmony of its surface contrasts. Radical and clear in its language, cosmopolitan and Northwest homegrown in its intellectual sensibility, powerful in the way it interrogates the modern nature of power, it is a book that exemplifies the best verities of American travel literature by taking a hammer to the clichés of the genre at its worst. Reaching to both Whitman and Milosz, Consistently East is a book of the first rank that deserves to be read by as many people as possible.” Robert Lashley, Stranger Genius Award Nominee and author of The Homeboy Songs and Up South.
“Traveling roads in between two stages of apocalypse, here is a friend’s diary written on a hostel wall. Through poetry, we relax into the same curiosity and fear of the wanderer, his flashbacks becoming ours. Love, insight, and invitation command this collection. And the revelation that our memoir is safest in the hands of a madman.” – Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of Heaven is All Goodbyes (City Lights), winner of the 2018 California Book Award for Poetry.
About Consistently East
“What is adventure in the time of Google Maps? If hardship is what separates an adventure from a vacation, how does one reconcile the ease of travel with the challenges one faces?” Matthew Eiford-Schroeder wrote the poems in Consistently East as he emerged from the fog of a brain injury he suffered as a result of a violent attack. Join the poet on his global travels from Brooklyn, New York to London, across Mongolia via a charity rally, then on to Seoul, Korea. After returning to the West Coast of the United States to visit his family, Matthew attempted to work the oil fields of North Dakota before finally returning to Brooklyn, where he was assaulted. “I wrote these poems when the world stopped shaking enough for me to collect and organize words again. I had to rebuild myself, take an inventory of memories, then create. To begin to live in a world that had changed in a self that was no longer the same, but both not completely severed from the trauma and beauty of the past.”
About the Author
Matthew Eiford-Schroeder was raised in Camas, Washington, where he spent a sizable portion of his time working and playing on his grandparents’ cattle farm. He moved around America, working retail and lifting heavy things, before eventually landing in New York, where he snuck into an art school and became a bouncer. He currently lives in Bellingham, where he is studying political science at Western Washington University.
Please join Printed Matter Vancouver co-founders Christopher Luna and Toni Partington and the Vancouver poetry community on August 9, 2018 when we celebrate the release of Consistently East at Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic.
PRINTED MATTER VANCOUVER 