Calendar
Phil Merwin: Book Launch | Reading from his debut book of poems, "Songs For Hungry Ghosts" with Sean Croghan
Phil Merwin: Book Launch | Reading from his debut book of poems, "Songs For Hungry Ghosts" with Sean Croghan
Dec 19
5 pm
Phil Merwin has always lived at the intersection of poetry and punk rock,
a place where words burn as intensely as amplifiers.
As the vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the long-running Eugene, Oregon–based post-metal/post-punk trio dirtclodfight, Merwin has spent decades channeling emotional grit into heavy music.
Now, with the release of his first poetry collection, Songs for Hungry Ghosts (Cavity Search Records),
he turns that same raw honesty inward.
The book is both an origin story and a homecoming - proof that before the tours, before the records, before the band became a cult name in underground heavy music, it all began with a poem.
The title itself comes from the book's opening piece, "Portland," in which Merwin explores the Buddhist idea of
"hungry ghosts," beings driven endlessly by craving.
For Merwin, the metaphor is personal.
He and his close friend and drummer Eric Johnson - whose presence haunts the entire collection -
once lived together while both were weathering turbulent periods of life.
"We were hungry ghosts together," Merwin says. "Trapped there, like we could never leave.
And the whole point is: I'm not the Lone Ranger. We're all hungry ghosts.”
That understanding is the emotional nucleus of the book.
Songs for Hungry Ghosts is a work of grief, humor, memory, and survival - poetry built from the parts of a life that don't fit neatly into verse/chorus/verse.
"This beautiful itch that can't quite be scratched, this emptiness that spills over everything,
" Merwin writes in "The Uninvited," a line he says might be the book's beating heart.
It's the condition of living with what arrives unasked for: loss, madness, love, and the way poetry gives a shape to all of it.
Foucault’s Bookshop annual holiday party✨
Mother Foucault’s Bookshop invites you to our fifteenth annual holiday party✨
On Saturday, December 20th, from 7 pm until late
At our new location: 715 SE Grand Avenue.
Guests are encouraged to make a gift to l’école buissonnière, a new nonprofit dedicated to building and sustaining spaces for art, literature, translation, and scholarship.
All donations will support the purchase of our building as a permanent home for the nonprofit and our vibrant community
Winter Solstice Meditations on Unity featuring Pacific Lumber & Wire (open source string orchestra): A Fundraiser
Sunday, December 21
Join us for an evening of meditative strings and poetry for Immigrant Legal Defense Fundraiser.
Eventbrite link to RVSP
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solstice-meditations-pacific-lumber-wire-fundraiser-tickets-1976671101475?aff=oddtdtcreator
Donation - $10-30 (cash / venmo at doors)
RSVP Online - Cash or venmo tickets collected at doors
Doors @ 7:30 pm
Music at 8 pm
715 SE Grand
With ~
Pacific Lumber & Wire
Hosted by bassist Andrew Jones, Pacific Lumber & Wire is an ad hoc gathering of string players working with open source structured improvisation & conceptual composition. The intention is to create a zero risk environment to explore sound and community cooperation, with a healthy dose of play and catharsis achieved. Prompts, graphic notation, games, process pieces- any and all ideas are entertained, adapted and integrated as they're offered and molded by the group.
Ft.
Kate Kilbourne, Richie Green, Chibia Ulinwa.
Alexis Mahler, Jacob Mitas, Kyleen King, Harlan Silverman, James Staub, Shao Wei Wu and Andrew Jones for the PL&W group and we'll have poetry shared by Armin Tolentino, Zosia Wiatr and Casey Bush.
Poetry by
Armin Tolentino
Zosia Wiatr
Casey Bush
Portland Book Launch & Reading: Chen, Hasegawa, Macarty & Zdeb
Portland Book Launch & Reading: Chen, Hasegawa, Macarty & Zdeb
Saturday, January 10, at 7pm
Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, 715 SE Grand Ave, Portland, OR
Join us in celebrating the release of four exciting new poetry books! This gathering of four dynamic voices promises an evening of expansive poetics, visionary storytelling, and community celebration.
The End of Welcome by Nicole Alston Zdeb (Airlie Press, 2025)
The Long Now Conditions Permit by Jami Macarty (University of Nevada Press, 2025)
NAOMIE ANOMIE: A Biography of Infinite Desire by Jennifer Hasegawa (Omnidawn, 2025).
Shiny City by Ching-In Chen (Airlie Press, 2025)
This event is free and open to the public! ~ masks & industrial-fragrance-free requested ~ for those who cannot mask, we request that you please test for COVID before coming to the event ~
Ching-In Chen is author of recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry), and The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie Scalapino Finalist).
Chen's Shiny City examines the "real" and imagined history of Riverside, California's Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future which reconstructs its own kind of history with beauty that emerges from between the cracks. Chen collaborates with Cassie Mira on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice.
Jennifer Hasegawa is a poet and community archivist. Her latest poetry collection, NAOMIE ANOMIE: A Biography of Infinite Desire is an experimental poetic take on anti-memoir. Her debut collection, La Chica's Field Guide to Banzai Living, won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and was long-listed for The Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, Bennington Review, jubilat, and Vallum. She was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and currently resides in San Francisco.
Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses, winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award-Poetry Arizona, and four chapbooks, including The Whole Catastrophe and Mind of Spring, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Macarty’s 2025 collection, The Long Now Conditions Permit, offers an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. Macarty supports other writers as an independent mentor, editor, and reviewer, and as a creative writing teacher at Simon Fraser University. Macarty lives in and learns from the arborescent desert around Tucson, Arizona, and the rain coast of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nicole Alston Zdeb is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her debut poetry book, The End of Welcome, holds themes of grief, resilience, and joy as a shell held to the ear holds the sonic image of the sea, as the heart holds the fallout of a suicide, and the body holds defiant against and bends to the machinations of progress. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Bedouin Press published her chapbook, The Friction of Distance. Recently, she’s had poems, photographs, and short stories accepted by Driftwood Press, Lana Turner, SWWIM, and other journals.
TRANSLATION TUESDAY
Translation Tuesday at Mother Foucault's!
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
7:00 p.m.
Triple feature of poetry and prose with translations from Hungarian by Ági Bori, from Spanish by Nina Perrotta, and from Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin. By popular demand, the reading will be followed by a short Q&A.
Come have a glass of wine and a listen!
Ági Bori originally hails from Hungary, and she has lived in the United States for more than thirty years. A decade ago, she decided to try her hand at translating and discovered she loved it. She is a fierce advocate for bringing more translated books to anglophone readers. In addition to translating between Hungarian and English, her favorite activity is reading Russian short stories in the original. Her translations and writings are available or forthcoming in 3:AM, Anomaly, Apofenie, Asymptote, The Baffler, The Forward, Hopscotch Translation, Hungarian Literature Online, Litro Magazine, Northwest Review, Points in Case, The Rumpus, Tablet, Trafika Europe, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. She is a translation editor at the Los Angeles Review.
Nina Perrotta is a literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese into English and an editor at Words Without Borders. Her translations have appeared in the Iowa Review, The Common, and La Lucha: Latin American Feminism Today (Charco Press, 2025), among other publications. Her first book-length translation, Clara Alves’s London on My Mind, was published by Scholastic in 2024. She has received grants and fellowships from MacDowell, the Fulbright Commission, the British Centre for Literary Translation, and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. In 2022, she was a finalist for the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize.
Jay Boss Rubin is a writer and literary translator from Swahili into English. His book-length translations include Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi (Yale University Press) and The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories by Esther Karin Mngodo (Hanging Loose Press). He also contributed to Two Lines Press’s 2023 collection, No Edges: Swahili Stories. He is currently at work on the award-winning spy novel New Virus by Halfani Sudy (forthcoming from University of Georgia Press). His translation and translation-adjacent work has appeared in Asymptote, The Common, The Hopkins Review, Living in Languages, Northwest Review, and other outlets. He was the recipient of a 2022 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and the 2024 Loose Translation Award. He is a proud graduate of the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, and he currently serves as Managing Editor of Portland Tennis Courterly.
Book Launch — Hybred, by Jamie Mustard and Francesca Filomena
Book Launch — Hybred, by Jamie Mustard and Francesca Filomena
Set in a future-adjacent, alternative Los Angeles, this is a story of staggering poverty, drugs, and violence and of an artistic child who finds beauty in the ugly and sublime hope in our conflicts.
HYBRED shows us how in our most marginalized communities lies an astonishing amount of genius which goes unnoticed and is so often tragically wasted.
Nine-year-old Johnny James lives in The Casque, the poorest neighborhood in Greater Angeles, where he shares a one-room apartment with his mother, stepfather, two brothers, and an army of cockroaches. He spends his days in the sweltering heat of the neighborhood, at the movie theaters, playing tackleball, or drawing – but there’s no money for him to go to school.
As death, addiction, and violence swirl through the neighborhood, Johnny grows up with friends, adventures, and magic around him. And he discovers how to use art, beauty, and personal strength to transcend the forces destined to hold him back.
Jamie Mustard is an artist, a futurist, and a writer with a focus on perception in the physical world. Growing up in severe poverty and illiteracy in inner city Los Angeles, Jamie overcame obstacles to graduate from the London School of Economics. He currently works as a strategic multi-media consultant, teacher, interdisciplinary art, design, and product futurist. He is the winner of The National Indie Excellence Award as well as the OWL Outstanding Works in Literature Award for his book, The Iconist. And his memoir Child X is being published in July 2025 by BenBella Books.
CONCERT - Baby Grendel & Bug Seance
Alt / Art Rock / Shoegaze
7PM Doors
7:30PM Show
Baby Grendel was formed in 2022 by Jonathan Suarez and Joe Mengis. The band now consists of Jonathan on Rhythm Guitar and Vocals, Colleen Johnson on Keys/ Backing Vocals, Tomás Sakatani on Lead Guitar, Faith Loomis on Bass and Zach Cardenas on Drums. Their new EP Hatch(l)ing is out now.
https://babygrendel.bandcamp.com/album/hatch-l-ing
Bug Seance
A young trophy band in the parlance of our times
https://bugseance.bandcamp.com/album/im-right-here
The 24 Days of Xmas Release Reading
Kevin Sampsell reading from his new zine of Christmas stories, The 24 Days of Xmas. 🎄✨
with special guests
Courtenay Hamiester
Daniel Elder
Brianna Wheeler
Kirk Read
7PM
Concert: Alexandra Burress & Remnants Window
Concert:
Alexandra Burress & Remnants Window
Eventbrite link to RSVP:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/alexandra-burress-remnants-window-at-mother-foucaults-tickets-1968865326191?aff=oddtdtcreator
Donation - $10 (cash / Venmo at doors)
RSVP Online - Cash or Venmo tickets collected at doors
Doors @ 7 pm
Music at 7:30 pm
Alexandra Burress - Alexandra Burress is a composer, music producer, sound designer, video artist, and multi-instrumentalist based in Portland, OR. Alexandra’s 18-year musical journey began with piano, guitar, and vocal lessons, which led her to perform original songs at various venues and tour internationally. In 2018, she fell in love with electronic music, particularly improvising on synthesizers, sound designing, and creating immersive soundscapes. Since then, she has produced several records, created a collaborative multimedia composition featuring live and post-production sound design, scored a documentary, composed for podcasts, and joined a three-piece band, Rosy Boa, as the drummer.
Remnants Window - Ben Latimer, plays under the moniker of Remnants Window and is a singer-songwriter in Portland, Oregon. Blending ethereal alt-folk and jazz influences, Remnants Window's music is a pathway to understand the self and synthesize with the beautifully complex world we live in. Externally, Ben finds inspiration from personal stories, the natural beauty of nature, works of poetry, and fantasy, with topics of human isolation, self-estrangement, death, and the tragedy of self-harm, but with a gentle reminder of hope, hand in hand.
Postal Social Club
Come to Postal Social hour at Mother Foucault’s 💌
Write letters and postcards while drinking tea and also somehow socializing.
We’ll provide pens, typewriters, stationary, envelopes…bring yourself, a friend, your favorite quill pen if that’s your thing…and drop by between 2-4 pm
For introverts (well, one introvert at a time), there is the option to grab your cup of tea and head upstairs to the secret solo letter-writing desk, and participate in a quieter fashion.
Literary translation reading + book launch for The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories by Esther Karin Mngodo, translated from the Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin
Literary translation reading + book launch for The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories by Esther Karin Mngodo, translated from the Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin.
In conversation with Words Without Borders Senior Editor (and fellow PDX literary translator) Nina Perrotta.
Friday, December 5, 2025
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Concert - Alex Crowson, Danny Austin-Manning
Doors 7PM
7:30 PM Show
Alex Crowson is a singer-songwriter and podcaster based in Portland, OR.
Alex crafts lovingly gorgeous songs that breathe tenderness and thoughtfulness.
https://alexcrowson.bandcamp.com/album/sorry-i-missed-you
Grandkid Music is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Danny Austin-Manning.
Concert - Free Water Shrew Ensemble, Anthony J. Stillabower, Michiko Ogawa
Concert - Free Water Shrew Ensemble, Anthony J. Stillabower, Michiko Ogawa
Tuesday, December 2⋅
RSVP Online - Cash or venmo tickets collected at doors
Doors @ 7 pm
Music at 7:30 pm
$10 - Cash / Venmo at doors
Eventbrite link -
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1966434692099?aff=oddtdtcreator
Free Water Shrew Ensemble
https://watershrews.bandcamp.com/
Water Shrews are like an amoeba, ever dividing and recombining not in any kind of pursuit but in the original act, that of being - a cell with a variable number of nuclei and no walls, a permeable membrane through which the experience of sound -sometimes, more often than not, music - passes back and forth. The electronic yelps of a moist amphibious organism rising from an opaque and viscous firmament of hissing static. The probing, intermittent signals of long lost satellites launched by people from a future that already came to pass. The sound of nutria sirens wailing on the banks of the Columbia River, Wimahl, who have no sailors left to lure and the clanking of the radiator just off-screen in an apartment in a slow-paced Russian film. The foghorn of a cargo ship harmonizing with the klaxon of an ice-cream truck. Everything travels to where it is destined to go at the pace it is destined to take, the time signature of swarming insects and slowly rotating galaxies. Unending untouched expanses tucked into a pinhole in a rotting, slumping fence separating neighbors - Borges' Aleph in a Southeast Portland alley-way. A graceful drawing of a bow across strings.
Anthony J. Stillabower
Anthony J. Stillabower’s improvisations are shaped by voice, feedback percussion, and machine learning algorithms. Situated at the threshold of audibility, his approach to sound inhabits a terrain of friction and flow, where presence flickers between memory and material flux.
What is the source of a sound? Is something sounding now?
MICHIKO O (Michiko Ogawa)
performer-composer-researcher
Michiko is performer-composer and researcher born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.
She is working with several musical groups and is one of the core members of Berlin's Harmonic Space Orchestra.
She has been working with Lucy Railton, Manuel Pessoa de Lima, Klaus Lang, James Rushford, Sam Dunscombe, Ellen Arkbro, Tashi Wada, Carolyn Chen, Werner Duran, Taku Sugimoto, Crys Cole, Oren Ambarchi and others.
She also frequently collaborates with visual artists and dancers such Angela Jennings, Lindsay Bloom, Brianna Rigg, Laurence Favre, Karol Tyminski and Sabina Maselli etc.
She was awarded Bachelor's degree (BA) from Toho-Gakuen School of Music, Master's degree(MA)for clarinet performance from Die Hochschule für Musik Freiburg under Prof. Jörg Widmann, and her Doctoral degree (DMA) from the University of California San Diego in 2019 with research on the film music of Teiji Ito, and is currently writing a biography of him.
Book launch - Edith Mirante, "Where the Mithuns Are: Essays on War, Art and Beasts"
Book launch for Edith Mirante's latest book, "Where the Mithuns Are: Essays on War, Art and Beasts."
Her essays reveal remote Chinland, pandemic Yellowstone, Manzanar, Cahokia, Heizer’s City.
Interwoven are themes of Indigenous resistance, land rights, wildness, art in times of conflict, the guns and tanks of Burma. Bison, elk (including a certain inanimate one in Portland), muskox and mithuns roam.
There could be heroes: World War II artists Anthony Gross and Clive Branson, labor firebrand Karl Yoneda. There will be revolution, and enchantment.
Edith Mirante is the founder of ProjectMaje.org which distributes information on Burma (Myanmar) human rights and environmental issues.
She is an artist and author of two Burma books, Burmese Looking Glass and Down the Rat Hole, as well as The Wind in the Bamboo about Black Indigenous Asians.
Portland Tennis Courterly: Wet Issue Release Party 🎾
Portland Tennis Courterly - Wet Issue Release Party
https://tenniscourterly.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tenniscourterly?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
Friday, November 21, 2025
7:00 PM–9:00 PM
PNCA MFA READING NIGHT
JOIN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COLLEGE OF ART MFA COMMUNITY FOR A NIGHT OF PERFORMANCES AND READINGS FROM WORKS IN PROCESS.
7 PM
Concert - Gregory Allison & Amber Russell
CONCERT EVENTBRITE LINK TO RSVP : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1849327922599?aff=oddtdtcreator
Amber Russell is an acoustic experimental fingerstyle guitarist based in Portland, Oregon.
She has an unorthodox, theatrical approach to her style of playing. Her music has been described as imaginative and captivating.
She utilizes various techniques such as alternate tunings, unique approach to harmonics, percussive strikes mixed with catchy melodies.
Amber gained recognition through social media and now has partnerships with Ibanez guitars, Halland Guitars, G7th Capos, Elite Acoustics, DiMarzio Inc and many more. She has performed with artists such as Kaki King, Muriel Andersen, Yasmin Williams and many more for the International Women of fingerstyle concert in January of 2020 in Anaheim, California at the House of Blues. Her song “Portland Dance'' premiered for Candyrat Records in December of 2019 with over 26k views, Amber put together a 30 lesson guitar course for JamPlay.com in 2019, A top rated guitarist educational resource with hundreds of famous guitarist instructors available. She has been seen on KGW8 interview with Mtv’s Brian Mcfaden and has been a guest to many radio shows throughout the country, including Portland's own local radio Shady Pines Radio.
Amber Currently lives in Portland, Oregon where she and her wife currently own and operate their guitar school and retail store, Rose City Guitar Company and Is still an active player in the musical performance industry.
IG : https://www.instagram.com/amberrussellmuzic/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Amberrussellacoustic
Youtube video : https://youtu.be/X3t7MoM3Lxo
Gregory Allison creates with a single violin a sound that travels across great landscapes. He brings the sensibility of a film composer into a live and intimate setting. His training in South Indian Classical music brings a melodic fluency and emotional fire to his compositions while his Western Classical training is apparent in the wide sonic palette that he creates. He is a sound shaper. His violin goes from intimate weeping to orchestral soundscapes, carrying the listener on a journey all the way.
A composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who performs in a wide variety of styles and genres, Gregory is originally from Madison, WI where he began studying piano at age 5 and violin at 9. In high school he used his classical violin training as a springboard for learning about improvising, jazz, world music traditions. He started playing the mandolin and his studies on the instrument landed him a four-year scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he completed a degree in Composition.
https://www.gregoryallison.net/about
Gregory Allison -
Doors 7 PM
Concert 7:30 PM
Concert : Free Form Jazz - NOTES AND MOTES
Join us for an evening of free-form Jazz with NOTES & MOTES
Tuesday November 18th
7 - 9 PM
Concert : Avery Lynch - Direct Support: Tristan
Live show
Avery Lynch
Direct Support: Tristan
Ticket Link (live): https://posh.vip/e/avery-lynch-at-mother-foucaults-bookshop-1
7:00 doors
8:00 music
Concert - A.C. Sapphire & Shelby Natasha (Seattle)
Folk / Songwriter / Americana
CONCERT EVENTBRITE LINK TO RSVP : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1787963610289?aff=oddtdtcreator
Doors 7 PM
7:30 PM Show
A.C. Sapphire -
https://www.acsapphiremusic.com/music
Portland artist Ac Sapphire returns with the decadent new album Dec. 32nd, songs from a cycle that honors Sapphire at her best: guitar, and vocals front and center; celebrations of the songwriter, the shredder, that she is. Sapphire sits serenely among the songwriting class that is our generation's Laurel Canyon sound. Ac's music has a grasp on the cosmic side of Americana. She resides in Portland, but was once a desert denizen, and her southwestern exposure shows in the wide open, dusty, romantic sound of each song. She's the winner of Relix Sonic Showdown, a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. She's shared the stage with artists like Son Little, long time friend Sunny War, and even been featured on a Shirley Manson (Garbage) song. Ac has played the Philadelphia Folk Festival, Treefort Music Fest. Even as this album is being released, she's finishing recording another with NewSong Music as the winner of their 2022 contest.
Shelby Natasha - (Of Seattle)
https://boldjourney.com/meet-shelby-christ/
Shelby Natasha is a Seattle based alt-folk musician and producer. Growing up living between the Pacific Northwest and China, her music is a blend of the folk music of both cultures. Her ghostlike vocals are accompanied by the Guzheng and lofi-beats, woven together with sounds collected from the natural world. Her music focuses on themes of grief, belongingness, coexisting with anxiety, and finding home in nature. She has been performing in festivals and showcases locally and around the country participating in Oregon Country Fair, Any Patch of Grass, Northwest Folklife, Portland Folk Festival, Imagine Festival, Belltown Bloom, Duwamish River Festival, Song Suffragettes (Nashville), and Open Folk (LA).
Collaborative talk on Abject Expressionism - With Ash Yang Thompson Jaydra Johnson
Collaborative talk on Abject Expressionism
Ash Yang Thompson
Jaydra Johnson
with readings from Low: Notes on Art and Trash (Johnson) and Still Worm (Yang Thompson)
Doors 6:30
Event 7
Concert - Jeremy Ferrara (LA) & Rosy Boa
CONCERT EVENTBRITE LINK TO RSVP : : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1731796864039?aff=oddtdtcreator
Jeremy Ferrara (LA)
https://jeremyferraramusic.com/
“Certainty and clarity are like everything else, they come and go”
These are the kind of gentle reminders you get when you listen to LA based songwriter Jeremy Ferrara.
Regarded as “open-hearted and determinedly honest” by Americana UK, and as “exuding as much gentleness and vulnerability as anything in Nick Drake’s catalog” by Americana Highways, Ferrara has carved out a unique space in the indie-folk landscape. Touring the US and Europe multiple times and signing to a label, all while working as the guitarist in fellow rising star Margo Cilker’s touring band- rarely do folk songwriters remain as centered, as earnest, and as entertaining. Ferrara comes through on his latest album Darkness Is A Bright Sound (produced by Luke Temple) with a full band, heralding his philosophical delivery of songs full of gentle acceptance and purified positivity.
Rosy boa is a three-piece band based in Portland, OR. Our sound is a dreamy slowcore with songs inspired by life events, real love, dreams, and time.
Doors 7 PM
Show 7:30 PM
Concert - Sophie Bird
CONCERT EVENTBRITE LINK TO RSVP :: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1788174250319?aff=oddtdtcreator
Sophie Bird
Sophie Bird is a Singer / Songwriter now residing in Portland.
Sophie Creates
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc5JCVX3OCnechvXyiOjIIg
Doors 7 PM
Show 7:30 PM
WHAT WE HOLD & LEAVE BEHIND: Poetry reading & slideshow - Collaboration between photographer Jim Lommasson and poet Willa Schneberg
WHAT WE HOLD & LEAVE BEHIND: Photos of Special Objects and Linked Poems by Oregon Senior Seasoned Poets
This poetry reading and slideshow is a collaboration between photographer Jim Lommasson and poet Willa Schneberg.
Jim Lommasson has created “What We Carry” projects around the U.S. with the houseless and with refugee communities who had to flee their homelands. Willa Schneberg is the recipient of two fellowships and the Oregon Book Award in Poetry from Literary Arts.
This event showcases a project which celebrates the lives of Oregon seasoned senior poets, including Paulann Petersen, Kim Stafford, Carlos Reyes and Ingrid Wendt. Jim Lommasson photographed and printed images of objects of special significance from over 20 of these master poets— objects that reveal what truly matters to them— acknowledgments of well-lived lives in terms of work, family, identity, place and relationships. These elder poets paired photos of their objects with poems, and hand-wrote them in the white space of their 19” x 13” digital prints.
In this 90-minute program, slides of the finished works of image and poem will be projected, as each poet reads the poem associated with their special object.
BOOOK LAUNCH : Forgetful Secretary - Austin Gross
After diagnosis, the fact was that Austin Gross lived in his home country. He sat on the porch squinting like a potato and it was a comforting thing to imagine: rock-climbing with a blindfold. 'Can swim, eyes open,' he jotted and covered his eyes again. Sun, centrifuge, prognosis, bird-listening. The collision shaped genres like tectonic ripples. Windows open, a story while forgetting. 'I am a memory eater.'
Aras was furloughed from prison that summer. Five years before, she'd missed their movie plan, and the fact was that since then, she lived in her home country. Furlough, Aras wrote, was 'no-time.' They investigated the situation together.
A conversation with the author will follow readings from Forgetful Secretary.
Aras, to whom in any case the elected government refuses entry, will participate by correspondence.
Physical copies from Varamo Press in Belgium will be available for leaf-through and purchase.
Concert - Frankie Gothic, Glass Egg, Frecks Music
Concert
Frankie Gothic, Glass Egg, Frecks Music
Doors 7PM
Show 7:30
A CONVERSATION IN POEMS — Four Poets Dialoguing
A CONVERSATION IN POEMS — Four Poets Dialoguing
Thursday, Oct. 23, 8— 9:30PM
Gerald Wagoner, raised in Eastern Oregon, who currently lives Brooklyn, New York, is the author of When Nothing Wild Remains. Diane Corson, lived in Montana for many years, her latest collection is Along the Fault of Me.
John Miller, his latest collection entitled Olympic, was born and bred Brooklyn, as was Willa Schneberg, whose most recent book is The Naked Room. In a round robin fashion, these poets will read poems in conversation with each other, one poem will inspire another, to spark further exchange among themselves and audience members.
Book Launch with Ben Morea and Detritus Books
Book Launch with Ben Morea and Detritus Books
Visionary leftist radical and artist Ben Morea visits Portland to launch his new book of interviews with Olympia's Detritus Press, Full Circle.
Morea will speak with historian Abigail Susik about his activism and art between the 1960s and the present.
Doors open at 6:45 for a display of Morea's paintings.
Concert - Nate Norton & the Tempest single release
Singer / Songwriter - Single Release
Nate Norton & the Tempest
Apocalyptic folk for the dark night of the soul
https://natenorton.bandcamp.com/
6:30 Doors
7PM Show
NIGHT COLLAGE at SCRAP, followed by POSTAL SOCIAL at Mother Foucault's!
Presenting a ~collaborative 2-part event~ with Mother Foucault's Bookshop & SCRAP:
NIGHT COLLAGE at SCRAP, followed by POSTAL SOCIAL at Mother Foucault's!
At 6 pm, join us in the SCRAP studio to make collage art and customized stationary, then at 7pm, we'll all head to Mother Foucault's (a short 3-minute walk) to gather for communal letter-writing and tea!
Drop-ins welcome before SCRAP closes at 7pm—then find us at Mother Foucault's until 8pm!
6-8 pm | Ages 7+.
Youth must be accompanied by an adult.
Materials & tools provided (including collage material & tools, pens, typewriters, stationary, envelopes). Postage stamps not provided.
Locations:
6-7pm: The new SE SCRAP Education Studio! 619 SE 6th Ave
7-8pm: The newly-moved Mother Foucault's Bookshop! 715 Southeast Grand Ave
Reserve your seats before the event by hitting RSVP!
Space is limited to our studio capacity.
This is a FREE event at both locations, but donations to SCRAP are always welcome, encouraged, and appreciated. :)
Matinee Concert - Neal Morgan & The Blue Knots
Afternoon Matinee Concert with Indie Pop & Singer / Songwriters -
Neal Morgan & The Blue Knots
Doors 1PM
Show 1:30PM
The Holy Hour: An Anthology on S*x Work, Magic, and the Divine: A Portland Celebration!!!
Image Credit: Layla Tobin, @laylatobinphotos / THE HOLY HOUR contributor
The Holy Hour: An Anthology on S*x Work, Magic, and the Divine: A Portland Celebration!!!
Saturday, Oct 11th
6:30-9:30 pm
6 pm doors
Free
(Tip your performer$!)
This event is about honoring and centering divinity and dignity within the stories, lives and lived experiences of workers. There will be literary readings, performance art, a book signing and a celebratory atmosphere. Anthology contributors Julia Laxer, Romy Blue, Uriah Fate and Moonyeka— (plus others!) will be present to share onstage and sign books afterwards. We especially welcome the local worker community to attend! This anthology is created by and for workers— this night is for you!!! Allies welcome
RSVP
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/portland-celebrates-the-holy-hour-readings-performance-art-tickets-1751256137249?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=wsa&aff=ebdsshwebmobile
BYOB!!!
This event is free— bring $$$ to tip the performers if you’re inclined!
15 copies will be available to purchase in-store— Please arrive early to ensure you are able to purchase a copy, or purchase one at:
https://www.workinggirlspress.com/store/p/the-holy-hour
Learn more about our events.
To organize a reading or book launch, call (503) 236-2665.