Calendar
Timothy O'Leary & Alicia Jo Rabins
An in-conversation event with Timothy O’Leary and Alicia Jo Rabins.
The Corona Verses blurs the line between novel and short story collection, connecting ten tales that explore the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the fictional town of Santa Pulmo. Tim O’Leary employs his trademark humorist approach to characters navigating love, loss, isolation, fresh starts, and the myriad of other experiences of the pandemic.
May Other People's Poems
Our monthly event when we recite other people’s poems from memory. Come join or just listen! 7pm sharp
Glass Jaw: poems by Raisa Tolchinsky
GLASS JAW
Poems by Raisa Tolchinsky
Striking and big-hearted, Glass Jaw depicts the grit and glamor of women’s boxing based on the poet's time training as a fighter in New York City.
A Knife Like Night: the poetry of Frank Stanford
A Knife Like Night
The Legacy of Frank Stanford
A conversation and reading with Luca Dipierro and Ed Skoog
A night dedicated to the poetry of Frank Stanford, one of the most original and visionary authors of the second half of the 20th century.
Luca Dipierro, editor and translator of the Italian anthology Acqua segreta (Interno Poesia, 2024), and poet Ed Skoog will discuss Stanford’s legacy and its impact on literature and art. The talk and reading will be accompanied by a rare screening of the Frank Stanford documentary It Wasn’t A Dream: It Was A Flood (1974).
Deep Care: The The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open, by Angela Hume
AK Press author Angela Hume has written an amazing history of the radical edge of the abortion movement. Angela’s book, Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open, has been featured in The Guardian, Slate, Ms. Magazine, and Publisher’s Weekly. Angela is based in Berkeley and has been remarkably successful bringing this feminist history to a wide audience.
No Perfect Mothers by Karen Spears Zacharias
No Perfect Mother, written by Karen Spears Zacharias.
1920s SCOTUS case re: Reproductive Rights meets Charlottesville's Carrie Buck, who knows a thing or two about how hard some men will fight to gain control over a young girl's body.
This story is important because it is history that isn't history—women still don't have sovereignty of their reproductive rights. This story is propulsive because it gives us a character to root for. This story is memorable because of Zacharias' command of language and insight into human nature. No Perfect Mothers is a book that provides all the pleasures of a great novel and then some.
--Beth Ann Fennelly, Author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
1+1=show with Dustin Drydirt and Richard Marshall
Live music with two solo artists Dustin Drydirt and Richard Marshall. 7pm, all ages, donations for the musicians
April Other People's Poems
Our monthly event when we recite other people’s poems from memory. Come join or just listen! 7pm sharp
The Old Art Show
Grapefruits presents another art show in the rare book room. Reception 5-8
Jack Hayes, Tim Ennis, & Andrew Yeomans
Jack Hayes will read from his book Prayer Wind, his eleventh poetry collection. The event will begin with music by Tim Ennis and Andrew Yeomans. Starts at 3pm.
Greasy Speakeasy
Greasy Speakeasy! Pisces party with vinyl DJ’s and bands. Heirloo Monsters, Radio Rupeztre, Skookum Bob, Nicky Snaxx, Dr Peepers.
8pm BYOFTBB
Kevin Craft, Bill Carty, Rebecca Wadlinger
Ed Skoog presents poets reading from new books!
KEVIN CRAFT
Kevin Craft lives in Seattle and directs the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College. For two decades he served as a faculty director of the University of Washington’s Writers in Rome Program. His other books include Solar Prominence (Cloudbank Books, 2005), Vagrants & Accidentals, (Pacific Northwest Poets Series of the University of Washington Press, 2017). Editor of Poetry Northwest from 2009 – 2016, he now serves as Executive Editor of Poetry NW Editions.
Regarding Traverse (Pacific Northwest Poets Series, Lynx House Press, 2024): Craft’s third collection explores the music, the miscues, the hidden forces and quirks of circumstance that constitute a human life. It’s a book of family origins and discovery, an adoptee’s journey toward self-knowledge, a son’s journey toward becoming (and losing) a parent, navigating the cross-currents of estrangement and acceptance, ecological peril and ambiguous loss. It is also a history of walking, of moving through the world at human speed.
REBECCA WADLINGER
Rebecca Wadlinger was born in Pennsylvania, where she attended the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, and her doctorate in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Her poetry has appeared in publications like The Best New Poets anthology, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Mid-American Review, among others. She is the translator of Norwegian poet Gro Dahle’s collection A Hundred Thousand Hours (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013).
Terror, Terrible, Terrific (Octopus Books, 2022) is a dark, imaginative collection with a distinct love of language, melancholy humor, and affinity for noticing the remarkable in the unremarkable. Working in the heritage of surrealist poets like Tate or Edson, Wadlinger writes with both expansive imagination and narrative control. She keeps “one horrid eye” always open (as Neruda said) to the unspeakable parts of existence while maintaining a plainspoken optimism that things will ultimately be okay. A short film based on the title poem is available here.
BILL CARTY
Bill Carty lives in Seattle and is the author of We Sailed on the Lake (Bunny Presse/Fonograf Editions, 2023) and Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books, 2019), which was longlisted for The Believer Book Award. He is a Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest and teaches at Edmonds College and the Hugo House.
Regarding We Sailed on the Lake (Bunny Presse/Fonograf Editions, 2023) : We Sailed on the Lake, Bill Carty’s second collection of poetry, consists of lyrics of spiraling awareness. As a signal lamp, unused, mirrors the sky, these poems reflect approaching storms, near-misses, and the violence inherent in nature, country, and economy. These poems explore relationality in many forms, moving from gentrifying cities to coastal beaches, from the sculptures of antiquity to YouTube searches, cataloging passing days “of which light is the measure.”
March Other People's Poems
Our monthly event when we recite other people’s poems from memory. Come join or just listen! 7pm sharp
Erin Malone, Rachel Edelman, Jessica E. Johnson, presented by Ed Skoog
Erin Malone, Rachel Edelman, Jessica E. Johnson
Poetry Event with Maudi Ainsworth, Ed Skoog, Josh Pollock, & Harrison Harb
Mother Foucault’s Poet in Residence Maudi Ainsworth will read with other bookshop poets Ed Skoog, Harrison Harb, and Josh Pollock
Grapefruits Art Reception
Grapefruits presents Redescription, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Ním Daghlian.
Redescription is the first exhibition at Grapefruits' new location in the beautiful rare book room at Mother Foucault's Bookshop!
Join us for an opening reception on Thursday February 15, 6-9pm.
More info at marthadaghlian.com/grapefruits-art-space
Other People's Poems February
Our monthly event where we recite other people’s poems from memory. Come recite or just listen. 2/2 at 7pm sharp
Other People's Poems January
Our monthly event where we recite someone else’s poem from memory. Come join us, even just to listen. 7 sharp
1+1=show with DJ Grissom and Sean Croghan
1+1=show! Our monthly live music event, every second Friday. For December we have DJ Grissom from Louisiana, and Sean Croghan. All ages! 7pm on 12/8
Astrology Dating with AstroWingWoman
Single? Always know the astrology sign of the people you date? Amber Blase, aka the AstroWingWoman reveals her method for predicting your luckiest times to meet somebody new. Based on an ancient technique that's gone unused by modern astrologers.
Want to try it for yourself? Access your free astrology dating reports at: https://amberblase.com/apply
Postulant Harem
A night of poetry and music. Postulant Harem by Oliver Dybing and Opie Hileman, and music by Charley Nims, Kadi Rae, and Bawx. 7pm, all ages, free.
1+1 show
This month’s 1+1=show is with 2 Portland treasures: historian, filmmaker, singer JB Fisher, with musician & artist Janet Julian. Show is at 7:30, all ages
Ben Morea Art Show and Talk
A teenage delinquent and drug addict, Ben Morea went looking for the Beatniks in the late 1950s, discovered the Living Theatre, and developed a taste for, and involvement in, art and anarchism. A painter, rabble-rouser, and troublemaker, he was the main instigator of the Black Mask group, The Family (popularly know as Up Against The Wall Motherf**ker, and no relation to the West Coast Manson “family”), and the Armed Love communal movement. By the end of the 60s, facing increased police attention, Ben Morea “disappeared” into the rural communal movement and anonymity. He continues to paint (and now blog), and galvanized by the current Imperial wars, has re-emerged to talk of the legacy and history of Black Mask and The Family, and their relevance to the struggles today.
Maiden, Mother, Crone: A Literary Scavenger Hunt and Reading
As part of the Portland Book Festival, we are hosting a scavenger hunt in the bookshop. Participants will receive clues like “A witchy book" or "A poem about a body part" and will have 25 minutes to work in pairs or individually to find books to match the clues. Winners will receive one of the new books by four award-winning Portland or Northwest authors—Maya Jewell Zeller, Alexandra Teague, Jane Wong, and Caitlyn Curran--who will also briefly read from their memoirs or poetry. Come join the scavenger-hunting fun in Mother Foucault’s and hear some dazzling, bitingly funny, and darkly reckoning poetry and prose by these four feminist writers.
November OPP
Our monthly poetry event where we recite memorized poems (written by someone else). Come recite or just listen! 7pm sharp. This month we are directly followed by a reading and scavenger hunt as part of the Portland Book Festival.
Learn more about our events.
To organize a reading or book launch, call (503) 236-2665.