Tiffany Burba reads from Meet Me Where I Left You at Another Read Through Books in Portland, OR on February 23, 2017
It is more important than ever to support local, independently-owned bookstores. One of our personal favorites is Another Read Through at 3932 N. Mississippi Ave. in Portland. Owner Elisa Saphier is delightful, personable, and knowledgeable. She allows authors and publishers to hold readings and book launch events in her beautiful second-floor loft, and hosts regular events such as Lesbian Lit Book Group. A generous amount of shelf space is devoted to Northwest authors in all genres.
You can find Ghost Town Poetry volumes one and two, Tiffany Burba’s Meet Me Where I Left You, and Christopher Luna’s Pulitzer Remix chapbook Brutal Glints of Moonlight at Another Read Through.
Printed Matter Vancouver is grateful to Elisa for her service to the literary community, and for carrying our books at her bookstore. We are very proud to be associated with Another Read Through. Show your support by dropping by the store today!
The latest publication from Printed Matter Vancouver.
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic featuring Coleman Stevenson
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington of Printed Matter Vancouver
7 pm
Thursday, September 14
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7
Angst Gallery
1015 Main Street
Vancouver, WA 98660
angstgallery.com
Coleman Stevenson is the author of two collections of poems, Breakfast (Reprobate/GobQ Books, 2015) and The Accidental Rarefication of Pattern #5609 (bedouin books, 2012). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of publications such as The Portable Boog Reader, Gramma, Paper Darts, Seattle Review, E-ratio, Osiris, Louisiana Literature, Mid-American Review, and the anthology Motionless from the Iron Bridge. She has been a guest curator for various gallery spaces in the Portland, OR, area, and has also taught poetry, design theory, and cultural studies at a number of different institutions there including Portland State University, Mountain Writers Center, The Art Institute of Portland, and Columbia River Correctional Institution. She created and has taught the Image+Text track in the Certificate Program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center since 2015. She creates tarot cards and other divination products through her business The Dark Exact. A collaborative text and image project with artist Aspen Farer, The Doppelgänger Museum, is ongoing.
Food and libation provided by Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street
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.
[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.
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004 angstgallery.com
Featuring Naomi Fast, author of
Portland Light: Post-Industrial City Poems and Photography
Naomi Fast is an American poet, artist, and photographer who grew up in California, Brussels, and Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo). Ms. Fast earned her MA in Writing from Portland State University, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Shelley Reece Award. Her poetry has been published around the U.S. in various journals and anthologies includingEmpty Shoes and VoiceCatcher, a journal featuring women authors and artists of the Pacific Northwest. In addition, her poem “Kajiji Fires” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The poems and photographs in Fast’sPortland Light: Post-Industrial City Poems & Photography, provide a glimpse into the Rose City’s evolution over a ten-year period.
Fantasy by Naomi Fast
According to Naomi, “I consider my Portland Light poems to be ‘light’ in language, length, mood and tone—they are, if you will, ‘language snapshots.’ My hope is that they also reveal bits of a city that aren’t readily seen unless we shine a light on them.”
Awning of Stars by Naomi Fast
Eclipse
by Naomi Fast
We photograph the bronze moon
in increments.
Planets collaborate
enlightening our address
with sun and moon’s embrace.
We’ve lived rivers and oceans of years
but it only takes one
cloudless September night
to eclipse them all,
to reveal with a flash
this naked moment
of our sameness.
Latitude # 1, edited by Rob Gourley, photo by Chris Gourley
FEATURING Natosha Natoaster Snider, Melissa Sillitoe-Bocarde, Dan Raphael, Robert Rahula, Joshua Baker, Toni Partington (aka Lumbrazo-Luna), Christopher Luna, & more.
LATITUDE, in its first issue published this week, spotlights several emerging poets along with new texts offered by some leading poets who curate spoken word events in the Portland-Vancouver metro area.
Objective was to produce a journal focused on expressive arts, what my professor, Nicholas Crome, used to refer to as “small literary magazines” back in the early 70s. Method involved gathering material from all sorts of contacts, without offering a preconceived theme for the issue, nor excessive guidelines, because I was hoping to be able to present both topical and stylistic variety. As for selection, I fortunately was able to accept something from each contributor. Results are initially appealing, although ultimately this is in the hands of the readers.
THIS SMALL JOURNAL focused on expressive arts is available in the following independent shops:
PRINTED MATTER VANCOUVER 