Voracity Book Launch at Birdhouse Books January 6, 2023 Featuring Christopher Luna with special guests Angelo Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna

 

Join us for First Friday with The Lunas (Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, and Angelo Luna) featuring the Vancouver book launch for Christopher Luna's Voracity (Lightship Press, 2022).

From Birdhouse Books: "It’s a family affair: Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, and Angelo Luna will be joining us for the return of our First Friday Poetry Series! 

Christopher Luna, co-host of Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic and co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver, has just released his new poetry collection, VORACITY, from Lightship Press, and will be joined by his wife Toni Lumbrazo Luna, co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver and local poetry powerhouse, and his son Angelo Luna, who co-authored the father-son poetry collection EXCHANGING WISDOM."

Angelo Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, and Christopher Luna in Rochester, NY November 2019

Photo by Maria Vara

 7pm

Friday, January 6

Birdhouse Books

1001 Main Street Basement

Vancouver, WA 98660

Voracity, featuring poetry and collages by Christopher Luna, is now available from Lightship Press or the author: christopherjluna@gmail.com.

"Brutally honest confessional poetry, Christopher Luna's Voracity conjures a beatific earnestness which transcends pain and suffering through acts of lyrical, life-affirming grace and redemption." David Madgalene, author of Call Down the Angel

In this revealing poetry collection, Luna invites readers on a candid and intimate journey behind the mask of a public figure as he grapples with identity, body image, and the enormity of his hungers."

Driven By Hope by Toni Lumbrazo Luna

Printed Matter Vancouver, 2019

Driven By Hope is Toni Lumbrazo Luna’s third book of poetry. It contains glimpses into the lives of people she has met throughout her career as a Social Worker and Life/Career Coach. These poems are based on real life and Toni takes them to new places inside her imagination. Perhaps you will see yourself through her eyes. Order Driven By Hope here:

https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Hope-Toni.../dp/1070872970/

 

Exchanging Wisdom: A Guide for Parents of the Autonomous

The Poetry Box, 2021

Exchanging Wisdom features poems for and about Christopher’s son Angelo Luna, as well as a few pieces Angelo wrote for Christopher. The earliest poem was written when Angelo was three, and the most recent at age 21. Christopher endeavored to encourage his son to be an autonomous, freethinking individual. Angelo grew to become that and so much more. Taken as a whole, the poems in this collection track the development of Angelo’s personality and the strong bond between father and son.

 Christopher Luna is a true heir to the Beat and New York School traditions of candor and grandeur. This collaboration and celebration of life runs on impeccable timing and deep love. As Luna and his son Angelo exchange wisdom they also re-invent the meaning of open verse: these poems crack open the heart and spill the joy of parenthood into the world.

—Lisa Jarnot, author 

Robert Duncan, the Ambassador from Venus

One day you’re gonna have to…remind me how to believe in the basic goodness of all beings, Christopher Luna tells his son, Angelo, in his latest book, Exchanging Wisdom. More than a collection of father-son poems, Exchanging Wisdom is a record of gratitude. Luna knows that to be a parent is to be both teacher and pupil, vulnerable and responsible. In every poem Luna’s love beams: Like Lone Wolf and Cub we traversed…and you reminded me that magic is real…. These poems contemplate our never-ending wars, sickness, apathy, and art-making through the lens of a deeply reverent father. For some, being a parent, being the adult, is synonymous with having the answers. Luna, a Buddhist poet, community-organizer, and activist, reminds us that questioning is the only way to truth. What are you afraid to find? he wonders. Are these the right questions to ask? In these mind- and heart-opening poems Luna invites us to experience pure joy and wonder again through memory and thankfulness. Once you’ve opened those doors/ you need never do so again, asserts Luna. Once father you cannot go back to your former life. Thankfully for us, Luna never did.

 —Claudia F. Savage, author of Bruising Continent

The Work poetry workshop returns today

Today at noon we will gather at Niche Wine and Art Bar (1013 Main Street) for The Work a monthly poetry workshop designed to help you generate some new work. After a brief hiatus for the holidays, we're ready to get back to it. We'll take our inspiration from poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Ishmael Reed, Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Suheir Hammad, Marge Piercy, Victor Hernandez-Cruz, Richard Krech, and Dan Raphael.

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, “Memory Gardens”

Why do we write? What is the poet’s place in the world? What can we do to increase our ability to inspire and provoke with our words? How do we integrate our compulsion to create into our everyday lives? These and other questions and will be addressed in The Work, facilitated by Christopher Luna. At noon every second Saturday we will gather at Niche Wine and Art to listen to, discuss, and write poetry. The cost is $20 per session or $45 for three months. For more information contact Christopher Luna at christopherjluna@gmail.com or 360-910-1066.

The Work is sponsored by Leah Jackson, Angst Gallery, and Printed Matter Vancouver.

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC welcomes Peter Ludwin Thursday, November 10

 

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

HOSTED BY CHRISTOPHER LUNA

AND TONI PARTINGTON

Presented by Printed Matter Vancouver

http://printedmattervancouver.com

at COVER TO COVER BOOKS

7pm Thursday, November 10, 2011

and every second Thursday

COVER TO COVER BOOKS

6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B

(St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA

360-993-7777

mail@covertocoverbooks.net

 christopherjluna@gmail.com

With our featured reader, Peter Ludwin:

Peter Ludwin is the recipient of a Literary Fellowship from Artist Trust.  He was the Second Prize Winner of the 2007-2008 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards, and a Finalist for the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award.  For the past ten years he has been a participant in the San Miguel Poetry Week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he has workshopped under such noted poets as Mark Doty, Tony Hoagland and David St. John.  His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bitter Oleander, The Com-stock Review, North American Review and Prairie Schooner, to name a few.  His first full length collection, A Guest in All Your Houses, was published in 2009 by Word Walker Press. A chapbook, The Door Unhinged, was a semi-finalist for both the 2010 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award and the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. His second full-length manuscript, Rumors of Fallible Gods, was a Finalist for the 2010 Gival Press Poetry Award.  His poem “Terezin Concentration Camp, Bohemia,” was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize.  An avid traveler who has journeyed on the rivers of the Amazon Basin in Ecuador by canoe to visit remote Indian families, hiked in the Peruvian Andes, thumbed for rides in Greece and bargained for goods in the markets of Marrakech and Istanbul, he recently returned from a month in Western China and Tibet.          

Tagong: the Wild West

by Peter Ludwin

A pack of dogs roams the muddy street

that bisects this one-horse Tibetan town,

and a dead one stains the sidewalk with its corpse.

Rough-looking Khampas gather by their motorbikes.

In the clinic, a young Chinese doctor

gives me a three-hour IV and a shot to bring

my fever down.  Obama! he says.  Kobe!

On the mountainside, prayer flags thick as stars.  

Notes from a Sodbuster’s Wife, Kansas, 1868

by Peter Ludwin

What really got us in the end—

we women who didn’t make it,

who withered and blew away in the open—

was the wind.  Space, yes, and distance,

too, from neighbors, a piano back in Boston.

But above all, the wind.

In our letters it shrieks hysteria from sod huts,

vomits women prematurely undone by loneliness,

boils up off the horizon to suck dry

their desire as it flattened the stubborn grasses.

Not convinced?  Scan the photographs,

grainy and sepia-toned, like old leather.

Study our bony forms in plain black dresses,

our mouths drawn tight as a saddle cinch,

accusation leaking from rudderless eyes, betrayed.

I tried.  Lord knows I tried.

Survived the locusts and even snakes

that fell from the ceiling at night,

slithering between us in bed.

I dreamed of water, chiffon, the smell

of dead leaves banked against a rotting log.

I heard opera, carriage wheels on cobblestone.

Cried and beat my fists raw into those earthen walls.

The wind.  Even as it scoured

the skin it flayed the soul,

that raked, pitted shell.

And how like the Cheyenne,

appearing, disappearing,

no fixed location,

not even a purpose one could name.

GHOST TOWN POETRY anthology coming soon

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/

$10

Available at Cover to Cover Books

and through Amazon.com April 23

ISBN 9781461075110

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.

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.

 

Monthly poetry workshop with Christopher Luna Saturday, October 9, 2010

Please join me tomorrow for my monthly workshop. This will be the first workshop held at Niche, Leah Lackson's new wine and art bar. Tomorrow we will celebrate John Lennon's birthday and listen to and read work from Allen Ginsberg, G.L.Morrison, and Akilah Oliver.


"The Work"
Poetry Workshop with Christopher Luna

Why do we write? What is the poet’s place in the world? What can we do to increase our ability to inspire and provoke with our words? How do we integrate our compulsion to create into our everyday lives? These and other questions and will be addressed in The Work, a workshop facilitated by Christopher Luna. From noon til 2:30 every second Saturday we will gather at Niche to listen to, discuss, and write poetry. The cost is $20 per session or $45 for three months in advance. Register now by contacting Christopher Luna at christopherjluna@gmail.com or 360-910-1066. See you Saturday, October 9.

For more information about Christopher Luna, and to learn about poetry events in Vancouver and Portland, go to http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com.

Sponsored by Leah Jackson, Angst Gallery,
and Printed Matter Vancouver

Niche is located at
1013 Main Street
Vancouver, USA 98660

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, “Memory Gardens”