Friday, January 11th, 7pm: Dani Rado, Will Skinker, Cassandra Smith at the Deer Pile

Dear Smorgians,

Please come out and support the arts Friday, January 11th at the Deer Pile. Smorg is pleased to host Dani Rado, Will Skinker and Cassandra Smith, all hail Denver writers. C'est magnifique!

The Deer Pile is located above City o City (206 E 13th Ave). Delicious food and drinks available at City o City. Meet there.

Reading starts promptly at 7pm (to make way for the event following ours).

Come early for dinner or a drink and stay late.

Hope to see you there!

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Dani Rado recently graduated from the University of Denver's creative writing program and currently is an assistant professor at Johnson & Wales University. She's had works published in Harpur Palate, MochilaReview, SNReview, 5^th Wednesday, and Clackamas Literary Review, among others.

Will Skinker was born & raised in Marshall Virginia, then moved to Portland OR, and then to San Francisco CA, and then to Denver CO. Auguste Press published his book Mascara in 2007, and Lew Gallery Editions published his small book Feed My Lambs in 2011. He attempts to climb mountains for fun and is writing a long non-fiction work-in-progress about his mountaineering adventures titled We Eat Distance,  two chapters of which have been published. His poems appear and disappear in journals here and there and this makes him smile. He moved to Denver in July of 2012 with his wife Yolanda and their two cats. He works for Adam's Camp in Centennial CO, a non-profit organization that runs summer camps for developmentally disabled children and their families. 

Cassandra Smith is a visual artist and poet. She works as an editor and book designer for Omnidawn Publishing. She would like to be a museum of lost objects but for now this is only an internet: www.moloprojects.org. She has degrees. She has fire. She lives somewhere in the middle.

Saturday, March 31st, 8pm: Jennifer Denrow, Erik Noonan, Nicholas Whittington at the Deer Pile

After 15 readings and a few years in Portland, Smorg has moved to Denver! Please come out Saturday, March 31st and celebrate Smorg's relocation by attending our inaugural Denver reading. Smorg is so pleased to host two wonderful San Francisco poets and local sensation Jennifer Denrow.

The Deer Pile is located above City o City (206 E 13th Ave). Delicious food and drinks available at City o City. Meet there.

Reading starts promptly at 8pm. Come early for dinner or a drink and stay late.

Hope to see you there!

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Jennifer Denrow lives in Denver. She wrote California (Four Way Books, 2011).

Los Angeles native ERIK NOONAN lives in San Francisco, where he writes poems, stories, essays, and book reviews. With Jacqueline Motzer of Portland, he edits and publishes a writing and art magazine (next issue: Felucca). A chapter of Vers, his book about Paul Blackburn, will appear this spring in Amerarcana, and a collection of poems called Stances is due out later this year from Snag Press.

Nicholas James Whittington was born and raised in the City of San Francisco where he runs Bird & Beckett Books and its associate non-profit, under the auspices of which he edits AMERARCANA: A Bird & Beckett Review. His poems have appeared in various magazines and the chapbook, SLOUGH.

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

Melissa Benham, Stacy Elaine Dacheux, Noel Tendick! Monday, July 18 7pm

Smorg hosts Poetry on the Piazza!

Monday, July 18th at 7pm, Smorg is overly excited to welcome Melissa Benham (Oakland, CA) and Stacy Elaine Dacheux (Los Angeles, CA) to Portland, to read with local legend Noel Reverend Blue Sky Tendick. Sure to be a blast!

Breathe the air at Director Park and support the arts!

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Cosponsored by Director Park and the Multnomah Arts Center Literary Arts Program

Director Park is located on SW Park bet. Yamhill and Taylor
(for more information visit directorpark.org or call 503-823-8087)

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Melissa Benham currently lives by the lake in Oakland, CA with her husband, daughter, cats, and fish. Originally from New Jersey, she moved to NYC for a few raucous years, before migrating to San Francisco in 1995. At the advice of Diane di Prima, she moved to Boulder in 2001 to study at Naropa, where she auspiciously met both Stacy Elaine Dacheux and Jesse Morse. In 2003, her first book, Codeswitching was published. After moving back to San Francisco in 2004, she and Chana Morgenstern founded the Artifact Reading Series late one night upon deciding there were just too many terrifically talented young writers who didn’t know much about each other. After 6 years of directing Artifact, Melissa took a break from programming, and will eventually get around to completing her 2^nd book Repronounceable one of these days. This is her first trip to Portland and is totally guilty of putting a bird on it.

Stacy Elaine Dacheux spent half her childhood outside Boston, getting beat on by tough girls. The other half was spent outside Birmingham, getting beat on by Southern Baptists. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she gets beat on by life. She writes articles for Flavorpill with Paris Lia, one of which was mentioned in The New Yorker’s Book Bench. She is also the co-founder of Slack Lust, an online magazine dedicated to cultural investigations. Other publications include: Thuggery & Grace, Versal, and Past Simple. Her short story, “The Sociology of Containers” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Noel Tendick tries to live up to his names, and he's gone by a few. He's gone by a few places too, looking for the edges of ground and water, water and sky, sky and the other side of light, and rarely found it hard to hold gratitude for all the being and non-being of this exacting and transcendent world.

Page Boy Celebration Saturday, June 25th

Dear Friends,

Please come out to The Waypost (3120 N. Williams Ave., PDX) Saturday, June 25th at 7.30pm to celebrate the latest issue of Seattle-based Page Boy Magazine! Readings by Thomas Walton, Sarah Galvin, Sarah Erickson and Jesse Morse. Watercolor portraits on display by Shannon Perry. And a surprise musical guest.....

Come out and support the arts!

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

Sincerely,
Smorg

Writing: Schomburg, Anderson

TUNGUSKA EVENT

People have started behaving as if they’ve been destroyed by an asteroid. They’re sleeping on the floor like flattened fiery trees. How can I carve out an exact life from this mess of everyone in the world’s days? I cannot even seem to make a dinner with the ingredients in this cupboard in this kitchen disemboweled and on its side in this forest in central Siberia. I’ll look at anything just to avert my eyes.

- Zachary Schomburg

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The new Bible won’t end

even if, in the end, we fill it

with dead insects, old photos, dust.

I’m writing

you from a yellow place, where I’m composing

a lovesong to orange.

Much as, in the original,

David wrote a lovesong to Goliath (expunged).

This is and isn’t true.

There are no oranges in the Bible.

- Erik Anderson

Zachary Schomburg, Richard Froude and Erik Anderson! Saturday, May 21 7.30pm

Dear friends,

Please come out to The Waypost (3120 N. Williams Ave., PDX) Saturday, May 21st for a smashing night of poetry. Local poet Zachary Schomburg will read with Coloradans Erik Anderson and Richard Froude, in town for one night only. Come out and support the arts!

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

Festivities begin at 7.30pm.

Hope to see you there!

Wishes,
Smorg

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Zachary Schomburg is the author of Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean 2009) and The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007). He co-edits Octopus Books and Octopus Magazine. He lives in Portland, OR.

Richard Froude was born in London, grew up in Bristol and moved to the US in 2002. He is most recently the author of FABRIC, published by Horse Less Press. New writing can be found in Birkensnake, Witness, and forthcoming in Slack Lust. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Erik Anderson's The Poetics of Trespass was published by Otis Books/Seismicity Editions in 2010. He teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Naropa University and, with Richard Froude and Anne Waldman, co-edits the magazine Thuggery & Grace.

Writing from Frey, Wayne and Maziar

from SORROW ARROW


The second to last train stop overlooks a metal yard

A lot of people are eating

In the movie we're graceful, less monotonous

We're not bunched up against the present

The sign at the church says heaven's got an edge

I don't want my donut

There's that picture book about the steam shovel that keeps digging

Old-fashioned nostalgia for a machine that works

My zone opens

I'll keep several appointments with a gaping zone

Then lob my machines into the cold, swollen river


Emily Kendal Frey

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Poem


sounds like we’re stopping a party along its glitter track

this transcriptionist is bird shaped

behind a door of neon-like light

a cabinet of speech

it’s my new dress

patterned as a beast might

the heat comes on, the roof is a reserve

we work our way into the archive

and the particular paper adheres

to a green glow, purple text with silver thread

I walk a small circumference

where the city starts to reopen

dry notes rain down with the cottonwood


Phoebe Wayne

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Magick

Come where you can hear
the traffic light change
from lime to carmine
so small
disentangle me
fly me away
what you say
many moonlit times


Paul Maziar