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Christopher Luna by Alisha Jucevic for the Columbian

Christopher Luna by Alisha Jucevic for the Columbian
Christopher Luna by Alisha Jucevic for the Columbian

Sunday, May 22, 2011

French Poetry with Naomi Fast at Niche Wine and Art Bar Saturday, May 28 at 6pm

Poet Naomi Fast

6pm
Saturday, May 28
Niche Wine and Art Bar
1013 Main Street, Vancouver
Niche poet laureate Christopher Luna invites you to join us for an evening of poetry by Congolese poet Olivier Sangi Lutondo, as translated (from French into English) by Naomi Fast.
Naomi Fast holds Master of Arts degrees in Creative Writing (2005) & Theater Arts (2006) from Portland State University. She has won several awards for her writing, including The Academy of American Poets Prize and The Shelley Reece Award. Her poem "Kajiji Fires" was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Naomi works as an adjunct professor at Portland State University and is on the editorial collective for VoiceCatcher, a Portland literary anthology. Most recently, she has published poetry in Ghost Town Poetry, edited by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington. Her website is http://www.wordstothewind.com.
One of Naomi's longer term projects is the translation of a book of poems and prose by Congolese poet, Olivier Sangi Lutondo. Naomi lived in Kajiji, Zaire in the 1980's, and her Congolese tata (aka dad), Pakisa Tshimika, founder of Mama Makeka House of Hope (http://www.mmhhope.org) and Lutondo's cousin, gave her a book of Lutondo's poems to translate from French to English.  The poems you'll be hearing are from this book, La Deliverance Au Paradis-Bar. 
Lutondo, "poète cokwe," (or Tshokwe, an ethnicity inhabiting parts of Angola, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia) is the "poet of peace" in the land of his birth, where peace is an ever elusive presence. This book introduces us to a truly special and unique people through the voice of their honored poet; we learn of some of their circumstances, hopes and fears, but most of all, we discover the music, poetry and beauty of their spirit.
In the preface of La Deliverance Au Paradis-Bar (New Legend press, 2002), Metena M.Simon-Pierre writes, "It’s this concern for the human condition and the unfulfilled desire for humanity to return to its beauty and original integrity that convinced me to preface this book. Indeed, this desire and quest to be a "better-humanity" come through, like a watermark, the poems and other essays collected in this volume. They echo - at times in rebellion, other times imploringly - the cries of distress, uncertainty, and stubborn hope that constantly disappoints his people... but also of the nobility of a people who know they are called to testify of their courage in this world of infernal machines."

In a letter to Fast, Olivier wrote that what made him a poet is the way poetry allows him to to eternally document, through art, the lives of his people. Her hope, as a poet and a child of Olivier's country, is to help his words be heard by many more people, in another land not really so far away.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

THE WORK POETRY NEWSLETTER: MAY 2011, Edited by Christopher Luna


Folks,

 Jake Loranger and Angelo Luna take a look at their poems
in the Ghost Town Poetry anthology
May 4, 2011
Photo by Mel Sanders

I want to thank everyone who attended our return to Cover to Cover and our book launch party. Ghost Town Poetry, published by Printed Matter Vancouver, the publishing and editing company co-founded by Toni Partington and myself, represents a mere sampling of the many great poets who have read at the second Thursday open mic since 2004. Toni and I are very proud of the results, and we hope that Vancouver’s literary community will feel the same. The Ghost Town Poetry anthology is only $10, and is available now from Cover to Cover Books (www.covertocoverbooks.net) and Amazon.com. I have included the press release in this month’s newsletter below. Please tell your friends, and let us know what you think after you’ve read it.

Toni Partington and Christopher Luna
invite the Vancouver poetry community
to raise a glass to celebrate the publication of Ghost Town Poetry
Photo by Mel Sanders 

I am also proud to announce that The Flame Is Ours: The Selected Correspondence of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978 is available now on Big Bridge. I met filmmaker Stan Brakhage when I was a student at Naropa. At the time he hosted a Sunday night film salon at the University of Colorado that amounted to a second education in experimental film. Stan knew many of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, and had many stories to tell. More importantly, he had an aesthetic. Brakhage agreed to allow me to interview him in preparation for my Master’s thesis, and we developed a friendship which I treasured. One day, he very casually mentioned that he had maintained a correspondence with Michael McClure, and that someone should compiled the letters into a book. I am very proud that these letters will finally be seen. The Flame Is Ours also contains many photographs and facsimile pages of the letters, as well as commentary and footnotes by Michael McClure drawn from a series of interviews I conducted with him in late 2010. More info in item 2 below.

 Michael McClure and Christopher Luna
at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, CO
1999

Don’t forget to join me at noon on May 14 at Niche (1013 Main Street) for my monthly poetry workshop. The workshop is $20, and will end at approximately 2:30.

Also, stay tuned for an announcement about this month’s bilingual reading at Niche!

Finally, please join us Thursday at Cover to Cover, when our special guest will be Seattle poet Carolyne Wright:  


 GHOST TOWN POETRY
OPEN MIC
HOSTED BY CHRISTOPHER LUNA
AND TONI PARTINGTON
at COVER TO COVER BOOKS
7pm Thursday, May 12
and every second Thursday

NOW IN A NEW AND IMPROVED LOCATION!
COVER TO COVER BOOKS
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B
(St. James & Minnehaha) 
Vancouver, WA
360-993-7777
mail@covertocoverbooks.net
http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com
christopherjluna@gmail.com

With our featured reader, Carolyne Wright: Carolyne Wright has published eight books and chapbooks of poetry, four collections of poetry in translation from Spanish and Bengali, and a volume of essays. Her most recent collections are A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2006), winner of the 2007 IBP Bronze Award; and Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire (Carnegie Mellon UP/ EWUP-Lynx House Books, 2nd edition 2005), winner of the Blue Lynx Prize and American Book Award. Her poems appear in The Best American Poetry 2009 and in The Pushcart Prize XXXIV: Best of the Small Presses (2010). A new book, Mania Klepto: the Book of Eulene, is forthcoming in fall 2011 from WordTech Communications / Turning Point Books. She moved back to her native Seattle in 2005, and teaches for the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts' Whidbey Writers Workshop low-residency MFA program.

Carolyne will also visit Clark College, where she will read at noon in Penguin Union Building Room 161

Last Dream in Perú
                                     Lake Titicaca

by Carolyne Wright

It was my job
to mimic the crane's cry
as my friends and I skiffed
through the estuary reeds.
But how could I, unless my life
beat in the heart of the bird
and looked through his eye?
My own name was all
I could call.

As they rowed, my friends told me
how, under the floors of their cabins,
they'd excavated old stone walls
whose joints were still
as mortarless and smooth as faces
without memories or dreams.

All I meant to say went quiet.
Real cranes cried
above the thin wind.

It was time to turn back
to land.  Before we reached
the shore, I'd have to find
an opening in the water
that fit my speech,
and whisper my name in it
before the lake closed over
and sank it like a stone.

THE WORK
MAY 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Ghost Town Poetry, edited by Toni Partington and Christopher Luna, available now
  2. Big Bridge 15, featuring the selected correspondence of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure, edited by Christopher Luna, now available
  3. margareta waterman at Three Friends Coffee (Portland) May 9
  4. REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE a Performance-Reading with live music  at PSU’s Native American Student and Community Center May 11
  5. Hoa Nguyen and Jesse Morse at Switchyard Studios (Portland) May 14
  6. Moonstruck Chocolate Poetry Series (Lake Oswego, OR) May 15
  7. Poet Judith Arcana at PCC Cascade May 17
  8. Figures of Speech Open Mic featuring John Sibley Williams and Rick Jolly at In Other Words Bookstore (Portland) May 17
  9. Brittney Corrigan & Kristin Berger at Spectacular Living and Design (NW Portland) May 18.
  10. Darlene Pagan + Open Mic at Paper Tiger Coffee (Vancouver) May 19
  11. “Poets Define Success Open Mic” at 23 Sandy Gallery (Portland) May 21
  12. Matthew Cooperman, Aby Kaupang, and Dan Raphael at the Waypost (Portland) May 22
  13. Voice Catcher 5 Reading featuring Angela Baumgartner, Jill Elliott, Darlene Pagán, Kristin Roedell, Nikki Schulak, Sonya Zalubowski at Broadway Books (Portland) May 26
THE WORK
POETRY NEWSLETTER
Edited by Christopher Luna
MAY 2011

1.


 GHOST TOWN POETRY
Cover to Cover Books 2004-2010
An Anthology from the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Vancouver, WA
Edited By Christopher Luna and Toni Partington
for Printed Matter Vancouver
http://www.printedmattervanc.wordpress.com

ISBN 9781461075110
$10
Available at Cover to Cover Books
and through Amazon.com
May 2011

This anthology collects a mere sampling of the hundreds of unpublished and renowned poets who have read at the popular Vancouver, WA poetry series that spoken word legend Jack McCarthy proclaimed to be “the best open mike between Tacoma and Berkeley.” Founded by Christopher Luna at Ice Cream Renaissance in 2004, in 2007 Ghost Town Poetry relocated to Cover to Cover Books, where it became a crucial component of Vancouver’s growing literary community. Edited by Printed Matter Vancouver co-founders and current series co-hosts Christopher Luna and Toni Partington, the book contains poems that were read at the open mic as well as new work. It also features cover art and a history of the series by Christopher Luna and a chronology of the featured readers who have traveled from around the country and the Northwest to share their work.

 Cover to Cover cat-in-residence Smedley 
expressing his approval for the new anthology
Photo by Mel Sanders

Ghost Town Poetry features poems by the following writers: Judith Arcana, Bernadette Barrio, Kristin Berger, Alex Birkett, Diane Cammer, Sheryl Clough, Sage Cohen, Kyle David Congdon, Carter Crockett, Eileen Davis Elliott, Naomi Fast, Olivia Gonzalez, Rob Gourley, Sam Green, Lorraine Healy, David Hill, Taylor Johnston, Maggie Kelly, Rainy Knight, Christi Krug, Barbara LaMorticella, Colleen Lindsay, Jake Loranger, Lori Loranger, Zoe Loranger, Jack Lorts, Angelo Luna, Christopher Luna, M, David Madgalene, Carolyn Martin, Jim Martin, David Meltzer, Norma Mizer, Mokii, Judith Montgomery, G.L. Morrison, Dan Nelson, Toni Partington, Jenney Pauer, Charles Potts, Michael Rothenberg, Kori Sayer-LeMieux, Herb Stokes, Margareta Waterman, Steve Williams, Laura Winter, and Sharon Wood Wortman.   

The editors of the book are available for interviews.

Cover to Cover Books is located at 6300 NE St. James Road, Ste. 104-B in Vancouver. For more information, call 360-993-7777 or email mail@covertocoverbooks.net.

2.
BIG BRIDGE 15 IS READY!
http://www.bigbridge.org

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL FIND:
The previously unpublished selected correspondence of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure, edited by Christopher Luna, which covers twenty years in the relationship of two of the most compelling and legendary artists of the post-war period in American culture. Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure met in San Francisco in 1954, and for several decades maintained an impassioned correspondence that touched on subjects including art, poetry, and film, as well as the peculiar difficulty of being an artist in society. The correspondence features accounts of their contact with artists including Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, David Meltzer, Robert Duncan, John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Philip Whalen, Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol and others.

“Divigations, A Work in Progress” a feature poetry chapbook by Jerome Rothenberg with illustrations by Nancy Victoria Davis.

Brian Unger’s essential selection from Philip Whalen’s “Kyoto Notebooks.”

This issue of Big Bridge is big on translations:
Terri Carrion and FR Lavandeira’s Tri-lingual Anthology of Galician Poetry and Prose.
A suite of translations from Nakahara Chuya, with a concluding poem in tribute Translations from Japanese by Jerome Rothenberg & Yasuhiro Yotsumoto.
Translations of Chan Poems from the manuscript of a book A Full Load of Moonlight of Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhist poetry translated by Mary M.Y. Fung and David Lunde.
Rimbaud, Ten Poems, translated by Bill Zavatsky. Selections from Turkish poet Seyhan Erozçelik's Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds, translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat. Translations of Demosthenes Agrafiotis manuscript by John Sakkis.

And Translations of Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi by Omnia Amin and Rick London. Hijaz has been a prominent figure in the avant-garde of Arabic poetry for a half century. Also, Rick London and Katherine Silver will offer translation of Martin Adan, one of Peru’s most revered twentieth century poets. And Poems by seven (7) Hungarian poets translated by Gabor G Gyukics and Michael Castro, and don’t forget the new translations of Rilke from Art Beck!

Two special guest poetry anthologies from Jason Blickstein (David Chirico, Anthony Seidman, Richard Rizzi, James Heller Levinson, Susan McKechnie, Greg Grummer and more) and Jason Braun’s “The Big Bridge Fusion Anthology” which reflects various traditions of Beat Poets, Slam Poets, Black Arts Poets and Hip Hop Poets and includes work from Sean Arnold, Wendy Brown-Baez, Margaret Gilbert, MK Stallings, Shane Signorino, Erin Wiles and more.

Also, “Out Looking for Lew: Bioregional Poetics, The Legacy of Lew Welch” by Jerry Martien.  And poet-translator Louise Landes Levi writes a memoir review of Annapurna Devi, widely considered to be the greatest living Indian instrumentalist. Levi studied with Devi in the early 70's & is one of the only Westerners to have heard her music, live.

Also, Frank Parker’s broadside collection, John Roche’s new book Road Ghosts, poetry selections from Pat Nolan, Basil King, Jacob Russell, and excerpts from Murat Nemet-Nejat’s new book of poems.
 And don’t miss Jonathan Kane’s anthology of fine art photos from his visionary friends Christopher Perez, Nina Pak, Marcin Gorski, Mosah Morazadeh. Also, collage art from Wayne Atherton and Geri DiGiorno, and fantastic painitngs by Noel Beebee.

We’ve got great book reviews of great books by great reviewers, it’s a list too long to list, and a refreshing selection of featured Little Mags, Cave Wall, Dirty Goat, Nibble, Red Mare and Lilliput.
 Check out our updated links page, find some great resources there, online zines, blogs, art resources, etc…

And a Thank You to the fabulous artist Jim Spitzer who has created original paintings on panels for the Big Bridge home page as well as sectional art. And another special Thank You to Jack Krick, webmaster extraordinaire, for making this the best looking Big Bridge issue yet!

BIG BRIDGE 15 IS READY!
http://www.bigbridge.org

Check it out!
Best,
Michael Rothenberg, editor
Big Bridge
www.bigbridge.org

3.
From margareta waterman

hi everyone

y'all know i get to portland now and again.  most of what i do with stephen fandrich stays in seattle.  this time stephen and doug ridings will be in portland with me, with a collage of sound, shapes and ideas we are creating specifically for this experience..   .

SHOW AND TELL GALLERY
3 FRIENDS MONDAYS: CAFFEINATED ART
www.showandtellgallery.org

        3 Friends Coffee House 
        SE 12th and ash
        may 9, 2011       7pm sharp

MARGARETA WATERMAN  
STEPHEN FANDRICH
DOUG RIDINGS

waterman-fandrich collaborations
nine muses mystery theatre

i'll say no more.  come and see (hear, think)

love, margareta

4.
from Pan Morigan:

REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE
a Performance-Reading with live music

Wednesday, May 11
2:00 pm
Free admission

Native American Student and Community Center
Portland State University

Andrea Hairston will perform sections of her latest novel, REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE, and Pan Morigan will offer songs she has written based on lyrics from the book. REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE is set in the early 1900s as minstrel shows in the U.S. transform into vaudeville and then slide into moving pictures. Hunkering together in dark theatres, diverse audiences marvel at flickering images. This ''dreaming in public'' becomes common culture and part of what transforms immigrants and “native” people into Americans. Redwood Phipps, an African-American woman, and Aidan Wildfire, a Seminole-Irish man, journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a ''city of the future.'' Gifted performers and hoodoo conjurors, they struggle to call up the wondrous world they imagine, not just on stage and screen, but on city streets, in front parlors, and in wounded hearts. Living in a system stacked against them, Redwood and Aidan’s story is an exhilarating, painful, magical adventure.

Andrea Hairston is an NEA award-winning playwright and a novelist. She is a Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College, and the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. Her first novel, Mindscape, was published by Aqueduct Press in March 2006 and won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award for works of speculative fiction. (andreahairston.com)

Pan Morigan is a vocalist/songwriter and the music director of Chrysalis Theater. She has toured as a member of Bobby McFerrin’s choral Voicestra. She created Castles of Gold: Songs and Stories of Irish Immigration, a special for Public Radio International, featuring her vocals and storytelling by actress Roma Downey and the late author, Frank McCourt. Pan's newest album WILD BLUE—9 genre-defying songs, sung, written, arranged, and produced by Pan—is a mix of jazz harmonies and soaring melodies touched by the Celtic world and the Levant. Music excerpts can be heard at panmorigan.com (mouse over the stones to find the music page.)

5.
Hoa Nguyen & Jesse Morse

Saturday, May 14
6:30 p.m.

Switchyard Studios
109 SE Salmon St.
theswitchpdx.blogspot.com

The SwitchReading, Art, and Music Series is happy to announce the successfulresult of our Kickstarter fundraising campaign! Thanks to generousdonations from members of the community, the poet Hoa Nguyen of Austin,Texas, will be reading with local poet Jesse Morse.

Hoa Nguyen was born in theMekong Delta, raised in the DC area, and studied poetics in SanFrancisco. With poet Dale Smith, she edits the journal and book imprintSkanky Possum. She is the author of eight books and chapbooks including Chinaberry (Fact Simile, 2010), Kiss A Bomb Tattoo (Effing,2009)andHecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey, 2009). She currently lives inAustin, whereshe curates a reading series and teaches creative writing.

Jesse Morse lives in Portland, Oregon. His work has recently appeared in PastSimple,SlackLust, and Unheimliche. He'll have twochapbooks out thisyear: Rotations (C_L Press) and paragraphs for dolphins(Thuggery &Grace). He runs the Smorg reading series. He plays guitar and sings inThe Whirlies. He spends a lot of time outside with his dog Hank.
6.
MOONSTRUCK LITERARY SERIES

Joan Maiers hosts a poetry reading on Sunday, May 15 at 6:30 PM, featuring NW authors Diane Averill and Don Colburn, who will read from their latest books. Copies available for browsing and signing.
Arrive early to order chocolates and beverages for enjoying the evening.
Seating space is limited. However, parking is abundant and accessible.
Free and open to the public.
Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe
45 S. State Street in downtown Lake Oswego, OR 97034
Contact: 503-697-7097.
www.moonstruckchocolate.com

7.
Poetry and Politics >< Art and Action

Come to the PCC Cascade campus on May 17th for an early evening conversation with Portland writer Judith Arcana.

Judith will talk with the audience about the value and power of art in relation to social change, art as a spark for positive action in political movement. She’ll perform her own writing and that of others, she'll give poetry and prose to audience members to read, and we'll all discuss the difficulty of making good political art in any form -- given what’s needed and useful when we consciously struggle to make art for justice in the USA.

Sponsored by the PCC Women’s Resource Center
May 17, 6-7:30pm
PCC Cascade Campus
705 N. Killingsworth
Moriarty Arts Bldg 104
Free and Open to the Public
contact: jessica.garrett@pcc.edu

8.
In May, Figures of Speech will have John Sibley Williams and Rick Jolly for our normal third Tuesday event at In Other Words at 7 p.m. As always, poetry prompts, word salad, random lines and cookies. In order to save space in this email, you can read their info at www.figuresofspeechpdx.wordpress.com/about 

We're looking forward to these two local dynamos giving us a spirited and moving reading. 

In Other Words Feminist Community Center is at the corner of N Killingsworth and Williams about 1 mile east of I-5.

9.
Brittney Corrigan & Kristin Berger Reading

Come share in an evening of poetry and merriment with Brittney Corrigan and Kristin Berger, hosted by Anita Sande in the gorgeous new studio of Spectacular Living and Design in NW Portland.

Wed. May 18, 7-10 pm.
Spectacular Living & Design studio
1323 NW 16th, Suite 1009 (corner of NW 16th & Overton)
Portland, Oregon
503-929-4675, design@spectacular-living.com

Brittney Corrigan’s poems have appeared in The Texas Observer, Hayden's Ferry Review, Borderlands, The Blue Mesa Review, Oregon Review, Manzanita Quarterly, Hip Mama, Stringtown, and Many Mountains Moving, among others. She is the Poetry Editor for the online literary journal Hyperlexia. You can read some of Brittney's work at http://brittneycorrigan.wordpress.com/.

Kristin Berger serves as Co-Editor of VoiceCatcher 6. Kristin is the author of a poetry chapbook, For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and is a columnist for Sage Cohen’s Writing the Life Poetic Zine. Her poetry and essays have appeared in CALYX, New Letters, Mothering Magazine, Passages North, and The Pedestal Magazine, among other publications, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Visit Kristin at www.kristinberger.wordpress.com.

10.
From Dan Nelson:

Hey everyone,
Many thanks to all of you who attended or promoted Aprils reading with Allison Apotheker. Allison was wonderful, reading touching, funny and imagery rich pieces on everything from aging and breastfeeding to alpine wonders. I'm sorry if my lack of a reminder prevented any of you from hearing her rich poetry.

For May's reading (Thursday May 19th at 7pm at Paper Tiger, 703 Grand Blvd in Vancouver, a mile east of I-5 between Mill Plain and Evergreen) I am honored to welcome back Darlene Pagan, our first 2-time reader. Darlene Pagán is a writer and teacher, an activist and mother, and a wife who makes a mean loaf of homemade bread.  She is a member of a writing group called Broads on the Side, made up of funny, smart women without whom she’d have had any writing successes, including publishing poetry in the following journals most recently: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Two Review: An International Journal of Poetry and Creative Nonfiction.  Her first chapbook was just released, Blue Ghosts, and she at work on a full length collection.

Darlene blew us all away last year with her stunning ability to get inside our heart. I know you won't want to miss her. So come on down on the 3rd Thursday of may for great beverages and great poetry, and be sure to bring something to read (5 minute time limit please) for our open mic. Now Here is some of Darlene's work to whey your appetite for the reading.

Dan Nelson
360-334-1129
nelsondaniel59@yahoo.com

Starving the Panic

Whatever woke you—
the baby choking, a lover’s elbow
to your chin, mice scratching
Morse code between the walls behind
the bed, the rumor you never admitted
to starting, the doctor’s, I’m sorry, before
she leaves the room—let the panic take
one last snap like a towel wound
and whipped at your thigh
in a high school locker room.  And then
let it settle like a sheet.  Set your hands
to smoothing each billow and pocket.  Pull
the corners taut, lay back in the dark
as if you’d been waiting for someone
to join you for a midnight picnic, someone
who still hasn’t shown by 1am, 2am, 3am,
and you hardly care anymore because
no matter what morning carries in
on its silver hands, the moon
is a purple tongued pup,
wagging the black night, just
begging you to throw something.

11.
CALL FOR POETS
Open Mic Poetry Reading: “Poets Define Success” .......  Saturday, May 21, 2011  at 4:00 p.m.
23Sandy Gallery’s May/June installation titled “1,983 Rejections: 3 Acceptances” by Mary Bennett is all about how artists define success. What is the definition of success for an artist, a writer, a poet, a dreamer? Please join us for an open poetry reading focusing on our personal stories. Bring poems that you’ve already written. Or, write a new poem using the theme as a starting point to debut at this event. Or, just come listen and be inspired. This event is free and open to the public.

Please email RSVP to Laura at 23sandygallery@gmail.com.  Three minute time limit per reader.

About 1,983 Rejections: 3 Acceptances
Mary Bennett’s installation examines the personal qualities of perseverance, deliberation, consistency and belief that were possessed by one woman, a poet and a dedicated writer. The unknown, anonymous poet believed in herself so much that she sent out 1,986 submissions to literary journals from 1973 to 1978, all recorded on yellowed and tattered index cards. As the cards document, she received 1,983 rejections and only three acceptances. Her dedication is the inspiration for Mary Bennett’s exhibition, which includes the found index cards, which will cover the gallery walls plus a re-creation of the poet’s imagined writing studio.

This unique documentation of a poet’s struggle and success were found in a dumpster in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood in the mid 1990’s. Now Mary Bennett will recognize and honor this unknown poet for her forbearance and patience. The installation will be on view May 19 through June 25, 2011 at 23 Sandy Gallery.

Laura Russell
23 Sandy Gallery
623 NE 23rd Avenue
Portland, OR 97232
Phone: 503-927-4409
Email: 23sandygallery@gmail.com

12.
Spare Room presents

Matthew Cooperman
Aby Kaupang
Dan Raphael

Sunday, May 22
7:30 pm

The Waypost
3120 N. Williams Ave.
503-367-3182
$5.00 suggested donation

www.flim.com/spareroom
spareroom@flim.com

==================================================

Upcoming Readings

6/11            Sam Truitt and Sam Lohmann
Date TBA  Chris Piuma and Jennifer Bartlett
7/10            Anne Shaw and Rodney Koeneke
8/24            Ally Harris and Karla Kelsey

==================================================

Matthew Cooperman's new book Still: of the Earth as the Ark which Does Not Move will be released this month from Counterpath Press. He also authored DaZE (Salt Publishing Ltd, 2006), A Sacrificial Zinc (Pleiades/LSU, 2001), and three chapbooks, Still: (to be) Perpetual (dove | tail, 2007), Words About James (phylum press, 2005) and Surge (Kent State University Press, 1999). A founding editor of Quarter After Eight, and poetry editor of Colorado Review, he teaches at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he lives with Aby Kaupang and their two children. More at www.matthewcooperman.com

Aby Kaupang is the author of Absence is such a Transparent House which just came out from Tebot Bach this spring, and Scenic Fences | Houses Innumerable (Scantily Clad Press, 2009).  Her poems have appeared in VOLT, Verse, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Parthenon West, Aufgabe, 14 Hills, Interim, Caketrain, lo-ball and others. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is currently pursuing her MS in Occupational Therapy.  More on her work is at www.abykaupang.com/

Dan Raphael is a Portland poet whose new book Impulse & Warp:  The Selected 20th Century Poems, came out in September 2010. Impulse & Warp includes poems from his first 13 collections. In addition, Children of the Blue Supermarket, a CD of live performance with saxophonist Rich Halley and drummer Carson Halley, came out in February of this year. Current poems appear in Rattapallax, Otoliths, Calibanonline, Heavy Bear and Skidrow Penthouse.   
 
Still: Reality

Consider: set in stone, written in blood, burned into memory

Consider: movement exactly, across pages and their waves, slight reverberations
            in the malleus and incus, innumerable forms mean and functioning

Consider: sampling as the additive portion of memory, a space forced open
            between vocal and instrumental culture

Consider: the fiction of memory, the faction of memoir, risible views and shades on
            the faces of flyers, genre, what the fuck, this really happened

Consider: the flyers in the face of the screen, some distant island they are flying to
            and from, his anger and her lust, his dark secret and her nightingale

Consider: a consumable product like a very big pill, you have been dreaming a dj

Consider: by necessity, by proclivity and by delight, consider by divining, by chelation
            and by despair

Consider: signals, like hoisting a flag, something in the forearms (lactic Eygptian),
           and the smell of sea (her just washed hair)

Consider: a colony, what is a colony, what is a child, what is a crime, a muddied diaper,
            a soiled well, a proffered pen, a routed man

Consider: his asceticism, which is alternating, which seems also to govern his view
            of the declining narrative

Consider: something still for someone to somehow link them together, you have
            been waiting, it doesn’t speak on your behalf, you have been troubled, there
                        is no reducible bullet

Consider: the whole broad omnevolent thing, the essay and the furrier, licentious
            hundred flowering into crease and view

Consider: a clarion is a brief horn of chance, Smith was a martyr and Jones a tin horn,
            it doesn’t speak, you have been troubled, this doesn’t make up ‘a reality’

 --Matthew Cooperman


the wraithlike invitation into Nothingness

creeps in on me     fingers
slow fingering me

someone exactly placed it
on my bruised palm’s doormat

I called it rhapsodic
improvisational

            since then    
            I’m anxious always

always the fatigue     that snatch of rapture
the one I      as part of all fleshes
suffer     it’s accompanied

I accompany it everywhere

two voices call me
nescio…..et excrucior

 --Aby Kaupang


(from Fresh Down the Mountain)
4)
cities are where dead things come—salmon, beaver, timber, business, politics.
we cant all be pyramids. we live higher up with nothing to mow or feed.
where their bus died they settled on 10 acres. you dont choose a house
you reach into the bag of now, markets are the constructs of abstract money,
as if a third of my body doesn’t have bones only momentum and belief
the investment of habit,
    I didn’t think the door would close that easily
when I fell asleep I had no idea the room would move.

its perfect here, milky way at night, with one microscopic cacophony of neon
halfway eclipsed by the petrified wind, so I know its still now in america
--Dan Raphael

13.
Join VoiceCatcher5 contributors
and editors for an evening of prose,
poetry, and art

Thursday, May 26, 2011, 7 p.m.
Broadway Books
1714 NE Broadway,
Portland, OR 97232
503-284-1726

Readers:
Angela Baumgartner
Jill Elliott
Darlene Pagán
Kristin Roedell
Nikki Schulak
Sonya Zalubowski