Open Mic and Lecture - Thursday, February 12th 8pm

Dear Portland,

Please come out to The Waypost (3120 N. Williams) this Thursday, February 12th at 8pm for:

SMORG OPEN MIC POETRY PLUS LIVE JOURNALISM & EXPERTS
Come read and hear poetry with the loose theme of "DOPPELGÄNGERS".
And witness Master Presenter Brian Manning's lecture,
"The Split Self: An investigation into the mysterious nature of Doppelgängers, doubles, and the other you."

Food, beer, wine and espresso all available at The Waypost.

See you there!

http://www.thewaypost.com
http://www.smorgreadingseries.blogspot.com

Peaches and Bats Reading Release! with David Abel, Joseph Bradshaw, Kaia Sand and Sam Lohmann

Dear friends,

Please come out to The Waypost (3120 N Williams Ave.) Friday, January 30th at 7pm to celebrate the release of a new issue of Peaches and Bats. Smorg is pleased to host David Abel, Joseph Bradshaw, Kaia Sand and Sam Lohmann, founder and editor of Peaches and Bats.

There will be music by Warren Lee (harmonium), Ian Ackerman (violin) and Gabriel Will (viola).

Festivities underway at 7pm.

Please come out and support these wonderful Portland poets!

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David Abel has the most extraordinary air of self-satisfaction. Yet, if we stop to examine those Chinese writings of his that he so presumptuously scatters about the place, we find that they are full of imperfections. Someone who makes such an effort to be different from others is bound to fall in people's esteem, and I can only think that his future will be a hard one. He is a gifted man, to be sure. Yet, if one gives free rein to one's emotions even under the most inappropriate circumstances, if one has to sample each interesting thing that comes along, people are bound to regard one as frivolous. And how can things turn out well for such a man?

Joseph Bradshaw eats chicken and horses in Portland when he's not teaching the world to sing at Portland State University or Pacific Northwest College of Art or writing his famous chapbooks such as The Way Birds Become (Weather Press) and This Ocean, or Oppen Series (Cannibal Books).

Kaia Sand is the author of the poetry collection interval (Edge Books, 2004), the wee book lotto, the chapbooks Heart on a Tripod and tiny arctic ice (all from Dusie), and The NAFTA (forthcoming from Duration Press echap series). Jim Dine created artist books from tiny arctic ice and lotto (Steidl, 2008), and Sand coauthored Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space (Palm Press, 2008) with Jules Boykoff.

Sam Lohmann is a poet, editor, letterpress printer, ex-busboy, future substitute preschool teacher, occasional tutor and temporary cashier in Portland, Oregon. He will be reading work written by others for his yearly zine, "Peaches and Bats."

Gabriel Will and Ian Ackerman (Olympia), and Warren Lee (Portland) play long-tone music in just intonation. In 2007, they completed a recording residency at the Satsop Nuclear Cooling Tower in Elma, WA. In 2009, they had a "Super Weekend."

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Food, beer, wine and espresso all available at The Waypost.

See you there,
Smorg

http://www.smorgreadingseries.blogspot.com
http://www.thewaypost.com

The Waypost Open Mic Nite - Thursday, December 11, 7pm

Smorg is proud to host open mic nite at The Waypost (3120 N Williams Ave.) the second Thursday of every month. December's theme: BICYCLES.

Please come out to read or perform. As Portland remains a national hub for urban bike riding, work pertaining to BICYCLES is encouraged. All work, of course, in any genre, is welcome.

Festivities underway at 7pm.

Hope to see you there.

Smorg #4

I said: "No Public Art!"
To Faulkner, of course he said: "Architecture

Coliseum jazz, at the middle is architecture
At the entrance, tabacs
buying a newspaper

In black, sat in the jazz hall
And though I said: "No Public Art!"
I put that nickel down upon the mantle
and stood at the vomitorium door
, Soundlessly smoking

Stoned, I hear the vowels more
What is broken, child?
My hand, it hurts
viz. etymological hammering
on the phrases heard
What have you hurt?
My hand, and they all were watching

--- James Yeary (from "Argos 4")



but there is a pigeon in the road too old to fly
and you cant say he is waiting for a wheel bump
or that he is waiting for a ride to the lake
like the white dove we wait
to run more like a mountain, like that sleeping man
always on that bench in the park, more and more always

we live our days wandering around waiting our death
when some hippy will come pour water to our grave
and say some heavy shit
but what if that hippy got too heavy now
like a cpr that got into your heart too far

I saw a man beating my fathers chest to breathing
beating him to life after his first death of many

and I was taken from the home by death
and went to the hospital on the lonely bus

and when the nurse came to take me from the room
I saw his heart meter plunge
and I shall never again doubt the osmosis of emotion

--- Tom Blood (from "The Act")

Tom Blood, Ah Holly Fam'ly, Galveston, Dracula inna Spaceship

Dear Friends,

Please come out to The Waypost (3120 N. Williams Ave. PDX, OR) this Friday, December 5th at 7pm for poetry and performance.

Tom Blood's the sky position won the 2007 William Stafford/Donald Hall Oregon Book Award for Poetry. If Ever Then Always, a book of romantic poems, co-written with Curtis Knapp from 1997-1999, is now also available from Marriage Records Press. Praise for Blood's the sky position: "In his author's note, Tom Blood avers that these remarkable poems "were written while staring out a window." Clearly, if ever there was a magic casement, it is Blood's. Here, perception becomes a beautiful act of absolute sympathy and attention a continuous evidence of perfect compassion. Never once does Blood diminish or deform his subjects. Rather, he puts his syntax and his self entirely at the service of their well-beloved motion. These are poems for the world, in all its wildness, in all its nearness."
-Donald Revell

Ah Holly Fam'ly 7 or 8 piece Stoner-Calypso Featuring members of Saw Whet, Ohioan, and Au. Their CD "Your Body will Become an Anchor" is occasionally available.

Galveston NW-centered folk influenced by Ecuadorian Black Metal

Dracula inna Spaceship Circuit-bent dub + poetry. Mixture of homemade electronics and literature.

Festivities underway at 7pm. These acts have been procured by the indefatigable local poet James Yeary, who leaves shortly thereafter for Alaska. Please come out and support the arts!

Food, beer, wine and espresso all available at The Waypost.

Sincerely,
Smorg

http://www.smorgreadingseries.blogspot.com
http://www.thewaypost.com


P.S. The Waypost's open mike, hosted by Smorg, occurs the second Thursday of every month. December 11th. December's theme = Bicycles.

The Waypost Open Mic Nite - Thursday, November 13, 7pm

Smorg is proud to host open mic nite at The Waypost (3120 N Williams Ave.) the second Thursday of every month. November's theme: RAIN.

Please come out to read or perform. As the long winter begins its ascent, work pertaining to RAIN is encouraged. All work, of any genre, is welcome.

Festivities underway at 7pm.

Hope to see you there.

Walton / Froude Bring Down the House

L and Elms

last night drunk with Lenna
stumbled home like a sailor tearing clouds from the sky
we made love beneath a summer elm
seeds all over us
whorling about, washing us
fracturing us only
to gather us into windrows again
into alleys, curbs, doorways then up again
into the mauve city sky where I am still
and think I like it here
though it’s day now and
there’s a thousand things I should be doing

--- Thomas Walton

From the drugstore, I take band-aids and a dark t-shirt with Denver written across the chest. The letters are superimposed over a grouping of straight and jagged lines that I presume to represent the city and mountains. The band-aids offer breathable protection and a non stick pad. The swerve and block design of their packaging is a trademark of the manufacturer, a dated conglomerate who decades ago tried to patent the stomach pump. I take these things so that our lives might perfectly and completely reflect this work.

I do not have a song to sing, nor can I remember the words to yours. Instead, I have burned these initials into my arm so we can sleep side by side in the museum. Of course, reflection is improbable but by noting these correlations we intimate entry into a new chamber, one in which the walls are built of curved mirrors. Most important is the warp created by this curvature.

So, it is a work of becoming?

It is a work of straight and jagged lines onto which language is superimposed. The chamber does not exist in the original pattern but in the curvature that language affords. Such was the response of the patent office. Such is the story of the drugstore.

--- Richard Froude