Saturday, April 16, 2011

Hoa Nguyen & Jesse Morse 5/14 @ 6:30 p.m.

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 local poet Jesse Morse on May 14 at 6:30 p.m. 

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.

Jesse 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.
As far as we know, this is the first time ever that a reading series has attempted to raise funds in advance to bring a poet to town. We are grateful to our literary and artistic community for supporting the effort to bring exciting poets to Portland. We especially want to thank the following people (as well as others who asked to remain anonymous):

1.     AmigoAmiga
2.     Andrew R. Grow
3.     Carol Ciavonne
4.     Christopher Ashby
5.     Elaine Fawcett
6.     Evans
7.     James
8.     Jen C
9.     Jesse Morse
10. Joel Bettridge
11. John Morse
12. Kaia Sand
13. Kathryn Carr
14. Kris Doty
15. Maryrose Larkin
16. Sam Lohmann
17. Sonya Philip
18. Stacy Elaine Dacheux
 
by Hoa Nguyen: 
LOVE AND LEVEL


Love and level     the sleeves

            Eating is a hand

here       Leave laughing if you must

like leave this creamy celery root


We push out              jerking

a sleeve of we    & I cover you

horses sourced in sea


(weave in waves and manes) 

By Jesse Morse: 
low, deep

                        (for ryan and jackie)


are the tunneled

hoots of great-horned

owls, easy silhouettes.


love is overrated,

i think, but

to prove otherwise

you both sink low

and deep into the

evidence of night,

change what follows.


you two

are one and one

but not one -

a thing real and naked,

casual and undone. 

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Sat., April 9th - HARP & ALTAR PARTY: Lichtenstein, Schomburg, Zeiss + Music by Hardin


Portland friends,

This Saturday, please come on out to Switchyard Studios, where we will host a celebration for the magazine Harp & Altar. Poets Jesse Lichtenstein, Zachary Schomburg will read, as well as fiction writer Michael Zeiss.

Alina Estelle Hardin will play and sing for us, and as usual we will have wine, beer & snacks for your faces. Feel free to bring your own drinks, and remember to tip your partytender. Join us for The Switch!

Hugs & Kisses,
Paul, Jeremy & Allison

--

Saturday, April 9th

*HARP & ALTAR PARTY

@ 6:00 - 8:00p.m.

Jesse Lichtenstein

Zachary Schomburg

Michael Zeiss

+ Music by Alina Estelle Hardin

& Artwork (TBA)


Jesse Lichtenstein lives in Oregon where he writes poetry, fiction, journalism, and screenplays (and helps run the Loggernaut Reading Series). His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Paris Review, Diagram, EOAGH, Gulf Coast, Octopus, Boston Review, and other journals.

+

Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007), Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean 2009), Little Blind Thing (Poor Claudia 2010), a dvd of poem-films, and the forthcoming Viking (McSweeney's, 2012). He lives in Portland where he co-edits Octopus Books and Octopus Magazine.

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Michael Zeiss, a former resident of Portland, recently returned to the city after a decade in New York. A consultant for non-profit organizations, he spent five years at the American Red Cross working with people affected by the attacks of September 11. His fiction and criticism appear regularly in Harp & Altar.


* Founded in 2006, Harp & Altar is a Brooklyn-based online literary magazine edited by poet Keith Newton and novelist Eugene Lim. In its short tenure, Harp & Altar has emerged as an important new source for innovative and risk-taking literature, publishing poetry and fiction alongside criticism and reviews of writing and art. The Harp & Altar Anthology, featuring a selection of poems and stories from the magazine’s first three years, was published in 2010 by Ellipsis Press, and new issues continue to appear twice a year at www.harpandaltar.com

The HARP & ALTAR ANTHOLOGY