Hosted by Dan Raphael Thursday, May 18 at 7 PM – 8:30 PM
Backstory Books 6010 SE Foster Rd.
Portland, Oregon 97206
The latest publication from Printed Matter Vancouver.
Fo Po Poetry for May will feature Brittney Corrigan and Tiffany Burba. We also have spots for 6 open podium readers.
Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collection Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, 2012) and the chapbook 40 Weeks (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and she is the poetry editor for the online journal Hyperlexia: poetry and prose about the autism spectrum. Brittney lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is both an alumna and employee of Reed College.
Looking for inspiration this summer? Why not spend some time with Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna, a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and a creative writing workshop leader with nearly two decades in the classroom. He would love to share his passion for poetry and storytelling with you.
If you are interested in taking one of these workshops, do not wait. Such classes will be canceled within 3-5 days of their beginning if the minimum enrollment numbers are not met.
Luna also facilitates a writing workshop from 11:30-2:30 on the second Saturday of every month at Niche Wine Bar (1013 Main Street, next door to Angst Gallery and the Kiggins Theatre).
Get LIFTED and join us for a very unique writing workshop with Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna! Christopher spent his late teens and early twenties working in a head shop on Long Island. He believes that mindful use of marijuana can be a powerful tool for consciousness expansion. Christopher is completely turned on by poetry’s ability to encourage empathy and compassion, and to spark the shifts in consciousness which can lead a person to fight for progressive social change. He would love to share his passion for poetry with you.
Christopher Luna is also the Clark County Poet Laureate, and he and his wife, Toni Partington, founded Printed Matter Vancouver, and co-host Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, the popular reading series 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 WA 129, The Poeming Pigeon: Doobie or Not Doobie, Bombay Gin, Unshod Quills, and It’s Animal But Merciful.
Pens and Pencils will be provided. Please bring something to write on or a laptop.
Space is limited, so be sure to sign up today to #getLIFTED! Tickets are a $20 suggested donation. Online reservation is required to attend the class.
21+, non-refundable/ non-transferable. If attendance requirements are not met the class will be canceled 24 hours before the class begins. Tickets will be refunded at that time.
Bring Your Own Cannabis
Valid Photo ID is required for entrance to the event.
Want to do some writing but don’t have a lot of spare time? Come to a one-session mini course at Clark College’s downtown campus for beginners and experienced writers alike who want to generate new work and engage in dialogue. Read, listen to, and briefly write poetry together. Whet your appetite for poetry with a workshop that touches on how to discover, write, and rewrite a poem. Bring paper and pen or laptop. Ages 16 and over.
Poetry as a means of expression, exploration, and experience is available to everyone. 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.
1072273 Mon. 10 am – 12:30 pm Jun. 19 – Aug. 14 $190 [8 classes] No class July 3
4. Summer Classes at Clark College (Registration Begins May 22)
Everyone has a story to tell. Each person’s life is filled with adventure, mystery, trouble, and triumph. Memoirs are a powerful way to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all human beings. Clark County’s Poet Laureate will encourage you to begin to see yourself as a part of history. Documenting your life is a wonderful gift for your family as well as a profoundly fulfilling experience for the writer.
Item number: 9100
7/12/2017- 8/16/2017 Wednesdays
1:00PM – 3:20PM
$159
CCE 208 (Clark College’s downtown campus, 500 Broadway
Vancouver, WA 98660 on the second floor of the Columbia Bank building)
Poetry Matters: Writing Poetry
Beginners and experienced writers alike will generate new works and discuss the poet’s role in the community. Read, listen to, and write poetry together in a supportive class focused on providing gentle, constructive feedback. Discuss how to construct a manuscript and ready it for publication. Writers of all experience levels are welcome. Bring paper and pen or laptop. Ages 16 and over.
Item: K154
7/10/2017- 8/14/2017 Mondays
6:00PM – 8:30PM
$129
CCE 208 (Clark College’s downtown campus, 500 Broadway
Vancouver, WA 98660 on the second floor of the Columbia Bank building)
Christopher Luna and Toni Partington in the KBOO studios in Portland, OR
Poet and activist Judith Arcana recently interviewed Printed Matter Vancouver founders Christopher Luna and Toni Partington for her radio program, Poetry and Everything
We’d like to thank Judith for her hospitality and her thoughtful questions. We are also grateful to our friend and fellow poet, Patrick Bocarde, for engineering the program.
Poetry And Everything Air date: Mon, 04/24/2017 -10:00pm to 11:00pm
Interview with Toni Partington and Christopher Luna
Chris and Toni co-host Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, the series he established in 2004. Together they founded Printed Matter Vancouver, a small press and editing service. Not only are there two of them, working together on those projects, but each of them does (notably) more than two things.
LGBTQIA+ FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
A 2016 Jack Straw Fellow, Artist Trust Fellow, and nominee for a Stranger Genius Award, Robert Lashley has had poems published in Feminete, Seattle Review Of Books, NAILED, GRAMMA, and The Cascadia Review. His first full-length book, The Homeboy Songs, was published by Small Doggies press in April 2014. His new book, Up South, was published in March of this year.
From Paul Constant’s Review of Up South in The Seattle Review of Books: “Lashley demands your attention. His performance style is part fire-and-brimstone preacher, part aggrieved literary nerd, and part Captain America. You can’t help but be moved, to want to follow him wherever he leads. And it’s easy to get swept up in that voice, to forget the poet behind it, to lose sight of the fact that those words have a writer, and that writer is, in fact, very good at what he does. Lashley’s second book of poems, Up South, is a reminder that Lashley is a writer of poems, and more than just that voice. Even more than in his first collection, The Homeboy Songs, Lashley is showing us what he knows. Up South is a collection with roots deep inside the tradition of poetry. Lashley evokes mythology and Biblical stories and classic poets here — not in a showy way, but rather because he understands that no poet writes in a vacuum, that every poet is in conversation with every single poet who came before.” http://www.seattlereviewofbooks.com/reviews/finding-his-voice/
Excerpt from Drake’s Progress
(Or why I can’t feel for my fallen wanna be gangsta cousin)
What is a king to a god of caught weight?
What is a god to a man-boy defrocked
in a paradise he imagined but never saw?
In a Byzantium of bright shiny grain leaden picnics
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Featuring Sam Roxas-Chua
Sam Roxas-Chua is a poet and visual artist from Eugene, Oregon. His poetry has been described as “tidal,” and he has been called “a man who can take any kind of physical material and transform them into art.” According to poet Dorianne Laux, “Like Jack Gilbert before him, Roxas-Chua reaches beyond the imagery and emotions we expect—creating his own universe, logic, and definitions of the beautiful.” His first book, Fawn Language, was published by Tebot Bach in 2013 and his current manuscript, Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, is forthcoming from Lithic Press. His poems have appeared in various journals including Narrative, december Magazine, and Cream City Review. His collection of poems, Diary of Collected Summers, won the first place award in the 7th Annual Missouri Review Audio Competition in poetry. Most recently he appeared in a live broadcast of Dear Sugar Radio at the Aladdin Theater in support of #writersresist. He is the owner of The Poetry Loft, a small business dedicated to community writing workshops. He holds an MFA from Pacific University.
Angst Gallery showcases cultural events including art shows, musical performances, book launch parties, classes, workshops, and the monthly Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. All art forms are valued. More than just a place to show art, Angst Gallery is also a safe space for community discussion, where all people are respected for who they are. We donate the use of the space to organizations that work for human rights and progressive social change such as Planned Parenthood, the YMCA/YWCA, Cascade AIDS Project, and the NAACP.
Tiffany Burba will be reading from Meet Me Where I Left You, her debut volume from Printed Matter Vancouver, at two readings in Portland in the coming months. Tiffany’s reading in March will also feature Printed Matter Vancouver Publisher/Editor Toni Partington. Please come out to support Tiffany and pick up a copy of her book.
Tiffany Burba, Leah Noble Davidson, and Lynn Knapp
MEET ME WHERE I LEFT YOU, the debut collection of poetry and short prose by Tiffany Burba, captures her real and imagined New York City adventures of love, lust, museums, jazz, food, and running in Central Park. She has an amazing love affair with the City and its inhabitants stretching from Brooklyn to Queens, the Bronx to Manhattan, and all points between. Living on whiskey kisses, a subway pass, and everything from pizza to soup dumplings, Burba fills and breaks her heart and ours along the way. Meet Me Where I Left You explores her arrivals and departures, her dreams of leaving Pacific Northwest forests for the taxi rides and street grime of New York City, her love of family and friends, and her unashamed quest for passion. (Published by Printed Matter Vancouver)
DOOR explores one of the oldest words in the human language in a way that only Leah Noble Davidson can do. Braking the word into four co-existing story lines, Davidson canvases the meaning of the word “door” through hard science, relationships, psychology, and dissected language itself. The book is not merely a collection of poems, but an experience in and of itself, wherein the reader falls through doors within doors at every turn. Built to be read over and over again, DOOR is riddled with quotes and inserts, footnotes, and hidden patterns that hold-up an oddly relatable and honest perspective of the world as we know it. (Published by University of Hell Press)
GIVING GROUND pulses with traffic and teems with life, leading us through tangled streets, intertwined lives. We find a place of overgrown gardens, alleys in bloom, pheasants in flight, rabbits, stray cats, and Spanish love songs, a place where the ordinary appears in an extraordinary light. With deft narrative strokes, Giving Ground reveals a place and its people, lives balanced on the shifting ground of language and culture. Like the place, Lynn Knapp’s poems are wry, real, and poignant. (Published by The Poetry Box®)
A monthly storytelling showcase about grief, loss and love. Gather in community with others who share grief in all forms and manifestations. Come ready to cry, laugh, listen and hold space for yourself and others. Trigger warning, because Grief. Content not edited for language or topic.
Doors open at 7pm, Readings begin at 7:30pm
Free admission! Full Bar!
Please consider bringing canned goods or cold weather clothing/blankets to donate to the Post 134 food & clothing pantry, which serves local veterans, homeless and anyone in need.
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Featuring Laura LeHew and R.R. Seitz
Laura LeHew’s collections include Becoming (Another New Calligraphy), Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press), It’s Always Night, It Always Rains, (Winterhawk Press) and Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press). Laura received her MFA from CCA. She edits a small press called Uttered Chaos. Laura always thought she’d be an astronaut. For more information, visit http://www.lauralehew.com/.
R.R. Seitz writes from the place of decisions made by an eighteen-year-old that carry forward, day-by-day, to the present. His 2006 book Right Here Right Now is in its third printing and made its way to odd places outside the U.S., including Southeast Asia. He has been featured around at various readings throughout the Northwest for 15 years. And yes, it is true, he has no letters behind his name.
Symposium by Laura LeHew
He brings me poison
words tormented love separation
a withered bouquet woven
with absinth wormwood
abandonment boredom regret
starry anemones delicate asphodels prickly
burdock the seeming happy amethyst and canary carnations
screaming antipathy and disdain
an untranslatable orange lily
whispering hatred against a pale vase
vain dream-like clusters of hydrangeas
jealous lemon hyacinths lost
in the sorrow of their vivid violet sisters
and
a forsaken single blood red tulip—the perfect suitor
[IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to icy conditions, this month’s Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic has been postponed until January 19. Please help us share this news, and stay safe.]
Jen Coleman is the author of Psalms for Dogs and Sorcerers from Trembling Pillow Press, winner of the 2013 Bob Kaufman Book Prize selected by poet Dara Wier, and We Denizens from Furniture Press in 2016. Originally from Minnesota, Jen received her BA from Beloit College and MFA from George Mason University in Virginia. She spent eight years in New York, where she co-edited the journal POM2. She now lives in Portland, OR. Coleman’s set will include one poem accompanied by drummer and songwriter Cat Minor.
Let’s Be Tarsiers by Jen Coleman
It’s too cruel to be a bloody human.
Let’s be a boom-slang, viper or hippo.
Let’s be tarsiers born with fur and eyeballs
big as our brains. Let’s have the long, long feet.
Let me call you tarsier like the long long
bones in your feet. Let me be a tarsier
and balance eye with eye and stay silent.
Take your third tarsier finger and touch my
third finger as long as your upper arm.
Touch your two tarsier toes to my two toes.
Eat bugs and lizards and know me, tarsier
As I know you, tarsier, feasting on bats.
Be awake in the night with me, tarsier,
and leap, and be quite quiet and quite shy.
Mike G: I’ve been writing for my sanity for quite some time now. It’s the most fun, and the most serious thing I do. For me, performing is the public celebration of this sanity. Now and then I’ve read my poems on KBOO radio. Now and then my poems get published. To say it another way: I oozed from the womb in Michigan with hardly more life than a manikin, then the Muse infused me with madness, inspired my wordplay of rage and sadness, or sometimes funny, so it’s said; I’ll clown and rant until i’m dead.
Mike G reads at Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic (photo by Tiffany Burba)
After the plague of boils Job scalded his secret patience formula upon my soul. That’s me lounging on the rotting log spitting a protest melody into the unwashed harmonica. The cold sun is a kind of food. I watch the leaves eat. Eyes fierce and blue in the whiteout blizzard. That’s me, the keeper of memory, not buried yet, heart still beating.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM CHRISTOPHER LUNA: While I hate to do this, I am going to have to call off tonight’s reading. I just ventured out, and it does not seem safe to drive right now. I don’t imagine that the roads will be much better at 6pm. Please check Facebook and printedmattervancouver.com for updates on when we will reschedule Mike G and Rob Katsuno’s featured reading.
I think that this is the first time I’ve canceled the event due to weather in our history. I know that this is disappointing, but I would feel terrible if anyone got hurt while traveling to Ghost Town.
Stay warm, stay safe, and please do what you can to help us inform everyone that we will not be gathering at Angst tonight.
Gratefully,
Christopher Luna
GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna
7 pm Thursday, December 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
Featuring Mike G and Rob Katsuno
Mike G: I’ve been writing for my sanity for quite some time now. It’s the most fun, and the most serious thing I do. For me, performing is the public celebration of this sanity. Now and then I’ve read my poems on KBOO radio. Now and then my poems get published. To say it another way: I oozed from the womb in Michigan with hardly more life than a manikin, then the Muse infused me with madness, inspired my wordplay of rage and sadness, or sometimes funny, so it’s said; I’ll clown and rant until i’m dead.
After the plague of boils Job scalded his secret patience formula upon my soul. That’s me lounging on the rotting log spitting a protest melody into the unwashed harmonica. The cold sun is a kind of food. I watch the leaves eat. Eyes fierce and blue in the whiteout blizzard. That’s me, the keeper of memory, not buried yet, heart still beating.
Rob Katsuno has been employed as a Boeing jet design engineer, a Mitsubishi Joint Venture Broker, a Morgan Stanley Investment Banker in NY and Tokyo. He holds an MBA from UCLA and currently works as a Ameriprise Financial Advisor. In 2011 he received third place in the Willamette Writers Kay Snow Writing Contest. He is also a talented performer who has appeared at BackfencePDX and United Solo, America’s largest solo performance festival in Theatre Row, NY. For more information about rob, visit robkatsuno.com
Printed Matter Vancouver Publishers Christopher Luna and Toni Partington are proud to announce the winners of the third phase of Poetry Moves, sponsored by Printed Matter Vancouver, Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna, Arts of Clark County, and C-Tran. The following poems will appear on C-Tran buses from January-June 2017:
“Joy” by Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados
“A Long Ago Memory of Calmer Times” by Bruce Hall
“Subsequent Layers of Existence” by Bill Lucking
“Why We Don’t Belong Here (excerpt)” by Livia Montana
“Hope, embossed” by Gwendolyn Morgan
“Eulogies Are for the Living” by Angeline Nguyen
“Just Breathe” by Bridget Nutting
“Calling” by Jennifer Pratt-Walter
“Camilla” by Alex Vigue
“how to love (excerpt)” by Desiree Wright
Unfortunately, Bridget Nutting passed away before we could inform her that her poem had been chosen. We dedicate phase three of Poetry Moves to her memory, and share our deepest condolences with her family. Please visit her family’s GoFundMe page to donate to a special fund to help her husband Dave cover the cost of the funeral, medical bills, and lost wages during her long illness: https://www.gofundme.com/2t8ccc3c.
Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna and Washington State Poet Laureate Tod Marshall will also have one poem each on the buses. Luna’s poem is entitled “pavement pastoral” and Marshall’s poem is entitled from “With Apologies to Andre Breton.” Christopher is the first poet laureate for Clark County; the Clark County Arts Commission recently extended his term for the third time. He will remain in the position through the end of 2019.
Poetry Moves judges Partington and Luna would like to thank everyone who submitted to the contest. We are also very grateful to Karen Madsen of Arts of Clark County, Graphic Designer Cameron Suttles, and C-Tran for their hard work and support.
There will be a reading to celebrate the winners at the Vancouver Community Library on Sunday, January 15, 2017. Previous channel cards from the first two phases of the programs will be available for sale at the event. All proceeds from these sales will go toward funding the Poetry Moves program.
PRINTED MATTER VANCOUVER 