Thanks to the wonderful Lorraine Graham, I’ll be reading at the San Diego Museum of Art Summer Salon Series Beyond the Banner on August 17 at 7:30 p.m. Looks like lots of fascinating inquiry and performance happening throughout this series, for those of you in the area.

17 Poets! Literary and Performance Series

Poets Christopher Shipman, Vincent Cellucci,

and Allison Cobb

8 p.m. at the Gold Mine, 701 Dauphine, French Quarter

Maryrose Larkin &
Allison Cobb

read at

Annie Bloom’s Books

7834 SW Capitol Hwy
Portland,
Oregon
97219-2466
United States

April 5th 7 pm

Portland poet Maryrose Larkin is author of Book of Ocean (ie press), The Name of this Intersection is Frost (Shearsman Books), Darc (FLASH+CARD), and Marrowing (airfoil). Her next book, The Identification of Ghosts, is forthcoming from Chax Press. She is a member of the Spare Room Collective, as well as a co-editor of Flash+Card press.

Maryrose is interested in  moving through the procedural into the unknowable.

Allison Cobb is the author of Born2 (Chax Press, 2004) about her hometown of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Green-Wood (Factory School, 2010) about a famous nineteenth-century cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The New York Times called Green-Wood “a gorgeous, subtle, idiosyncratic gem.”

Cobb’s work combines history, nonfiction narrative and poetry to address issues of landscape, politics, and ecology. She was a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow and received a 2011 Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission. She works for the Environmental Defense Fund. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

The Switch Poetry, Art and Music Series presents

Sue Landers and
Michelle Erickson

Saturday, October 22
6 p.m.

at Switchyard Studios
109 SE Salmon St, PDX 97214

http://theswitchpdx.blogspot.com/

Sue Landers is the author of 15: A Poetic Engagement with The Chicago Manual of Style (Least Weasel/Propolis Press 2011), 248 mgs., a panic picnic (O Books 2003), and Covers (O Books 2007). She co-edited the early aughts journal Pom2, Recent poems have appeared in Elective Affinities, Try Magazine, and The Recluse. She lives in Brooklyn.

Michelle Erickson: “I started writing poetry on Winnie the Pooh stationery when I was young and my chest felt too full. I write about loss, discovery, and mouse skeletons between floorboards—which is basically loss and discovery anyway. I like to deep sea dive into the places we can’t take our flashlights and bring up something beautiful when I can.”

by Sue Landers
From Chapter 17, Documentation 2: Specific Content

Consumption
What a book can do. Paper touching greatness. The stars just like us. Working. Elsewhere. The internet. A 18th century barn converted into a community theater. I knew then it was possible to be lost and present at the same time. Not like in songs of mines and quarries. But in a trolley or a brickyard. Puppets teaching children about Sojourner Truth. Not so far from North America’s first paper mill. The graveyard. Hurt candy. A secret door to the underground railroad. Act, line, and the like. Where the shooting happens. A kind of ghost dancing music. Much later, I repeat: we were very poor, you don’t understand, I’m not going back there. Imaginary possessions: discretion and common sense. Hard plastic masks to sweat inside. Produce in cans. Doors. A body between two doors. A body leaving through the back door. A body in a closet. All skeletons. My skeleton crouched or upright. I am blowing out the dents.

by Michelle Erickson

Where light goes

Come in here, let me tell you
about ritual, about carving your
name into the roof of your mouth
so every word will be true.
Come to the water, observe.
See how the sky bends,
how the light seems to know me?
My body is an anchor.

Listen to this light fall. Don’t talk about it,
drink it. Don’t raise your tongue, let it sink.
When it’s dark, I can’t forget.
I pack suitcases for my bones,
and when I remember my skin
I throw them out the window.
My body is a snow globe.
Done and done.
My body is a graveyard.

Walk through this. Take the branch
back, see that line shake?
Watch me arc and bow until my eyes
are no longer blue, but two paintings,
portraits of you standing by the sea.

I till this thirst, sift each moment
and when I find light, watch me—
I turn into a horizon and wail.
My body is a dowsing rod.

Look: when I put my hands together,
I’m not praying, I’m making a window
so light can come in, so I can have stained glass
against my forehead as I lift my arms
and flocks of light can trace patience
along the bottom of my skull.

My body is a room where light goes to study distance.
My body is a room where light goes to shuffle its feet.

My body is a room where light goes to learn why we sleep.
My body is a room where light goes to hunt.

The Switch Reading, Art, and Music Series is happy to announce the successful result of our Kickstarter fundraising campaign! Thanks to generous donations from members of the community, the poet Hoa Nguyen of Austin, Texas, will be reading with Portland poet Jesse Morse on Saturday, May 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Switchyard Studios: 109 SE Salmon St. in Portland.

Nguyen was born in the Mekong Delta, raised in the DC area, and studied poetics in San Francisco. With poet Dale Smith, she edits the journal and book imprint Skanky Possum. She is the author of eight books and chapbooks including Chinaberry (Fact Simile, 2010), Kiss A Bomb Tattoo (Effing, 2009) and Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey, 2009). She currently lives in Austin, where she curates a reading series and teaches creative writing.

Morse lives in Portland, Oregon. His work has recently appeared in Past Simple, Slack Lust and Unheimliche. He’ll have two chapbooks out this year: Rotations (C_L Press) and paragraphs for dolphins (Thuggery & Grace). He runs the Smorg reading series. He plays guitar and sings in The Whirlies. He spends a lot of time outside with his dog Hank.

I’ve started co-curating the Switch poetry, art and music series with Paul Maziar and Jeremy Okai Davis at the cool Switchyard Studios in Portland. On March 5 we’ll be featuring poets Lindsay Hill and James Yeary with music from experimental composer Justin Smith. Check it out!