Change is in the Air: A special reading by Jewish Poets and Writers Tuesday, November 3

The Oregon Jewish Museum presents:
Change is in the Air
A special reading by Jewish Poets and Writers

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
At the University of Oregon in Portland
70, NW Couch St. Portland, OR 97209
Admission is $3; free for members.

With special thanks to our sponsor, the University of Oregon.

Five prominent Jewish poets and writers will read from their personal collection for our annual poetry reading, established in 1999.

Howard Aaron graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the former Program Director of the Portland Arts & Lectures Series through Literary Arts. He has published two chapbooks and currently teaches creative writing courses at Washington State University in Vancouver.

Dori Appel’s collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening, was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2008. Her poetry has also been widely published in journals and anthologies. A playwright as well as a poet, she was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999, and 2001, and a finalist for the OBA in 2008. Three of her full-length plays are published by Samuel French and several monologues are included in anthologies. She lives in Ashland.

Jan Baross, daughter of immigrants from Belarus, has always been drawn to the Latin culture. Her first novel Jose Builds a Woman won first place for fiction for the Kay Snow Awards. She has also won awards as a filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright and librettist.

Willa Schneberg, a recipient of the Oregon Book Award in Poetry, is the originator and organizer with Director Judy Margles of O.J.M.'s annual Oregon Jewish Writers' Reading, now in its 10th season. In 2009 a prose poem appeared in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. Willa is also a ceramic sculptor. Her work recently was on view in ORA's, (an organization of Northwest Jewish artists) Celebration of Art.

Scot Siegel grew up in Oakland, California where his family belonged to Temple Sinai. He graduated from Oregon State University and currently lives in Lake Oswego with his wife and two daughters. Scot's books of poetry include Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008) and a chapbook, Untitled Country (Pudding House, 2009). His poems have recently appeared in Drash, Windfall, High Desert Journal, and The Oregonian.

Liz Nakazawa reads from Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon on Sunday, October 4

The anthology, Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon, brings together thirty-three poets to create a mosaic of Oregon. Organized thematically into seven of the state's ecoregions, this collection takes the reader on a statewide tour of poetry. Editor Liz Nakazawa will be reading poems from the book. Please bring your own Oregon-themed poem to read.

Sunday, October 4
1-2 pm
Central Library
U.S. Bank Room
801 SW 10th Ave.
Portland

Oregon 150 Poetry Book List: 150 Books for 150 Years of Statehood

Oregon 150 Poetry Book List: 150 Books for 150 Years of Statehood

In celebration of Oregon's sesquicentennial anniversary, Poetry Northwest and the Oregon State Library are announcing your nominated list of 150 outstanding Oregon poetry books — one for each year of statehood. The Oregon Poetry 150 books range in style and subject matter, and include poets both well-known and newly emerging — and this grass-roots list has been entirely created by poetry readers from throughout the state.

See the list here: Oregon Poetry 150 Books

Poets Henry Hughes and Sandra Stone in Stayton September 13

From staytonevents.com:

Poets Henry Hughes and Sandra Stone in Stayton

After a one-month summer holiday, Stayton’s Second Sundays Series of Poetry Readings will resume on Sunday, September 13, with a reading by poets Henry Hughes of Monmouth and Sandra Stone of Portland, both past winners of the Oregon Book Award in poetry. As part of the series’ continuing celebration of Oregon’s sesquicentennial, they will read not only from their own work but also from past Oregon poets who have influenced them—Hughes from Raymond Carver, Stone from Mary Barnard. The reading will take place from 3 to 5 p.m. in the studio of artist Paul Toews at 349 N. Third Ave., where it shares space with the Stayton Friends of the Library Used Bookstore. Admission will be free; donations are appreciated. Books by both featured poets will be for sale at the reading, and they will sign copies. Audience members are invited to bring one or two short poems to share during an open part of the reading.

Starting from opposite edges of the continent—Hughes in eastern Long Island, Stone in Seattle, Seaside, and Los Angeles—both these poets have absorbed the rhythms of water. “Nature—mostly the sea, the sound, the endless bays and marshes—was my first real theatre of experience,” says Hughes. From her childhood, Stone remembers “the undulant stilled surface of Puget Sound” at Seattle, “the great gray pumice-crested Pacific” at Seaside, and the “white-foam-flecked navy Pacific” at Venice Beach.

From the Atlantic coast, Hughes headed west—first to South Dakota on a football scholarship to Dakota Wesleyan University, then to Purdue University in Indiana for an M.A. in writing and— after an interlude of five years teaching English in Japan and China—a Ph.D. in American literature. Even inland, he was drawn to water, in Indiana spending “many hours fishing and boating on the Tippecanoe River, Wildcat Creek, and Wabash River.” Now in Oregon, where he moved in 2002 to take a teaching position at Western Oregon University, he loves the cold rivers where he fishes for steelhead and salmon.

Hughes’ first book of poems, Men Holding Eggs, received the 2004 Oregon Book Award in poetry. He has been very happy that this has brought his poetry to a much wider audience than it might otherwise have found. He especially enjoys responses to his work in questions from listeners at readings and in cards and emails with comments from readers. More important to him than the success that his first book has enjoyed is writing itself, which he sees as a way of keeping mentally alive. His poems, he says, “are stories told in the mind’s music.” In Stayton, he will be reading primarily from his second book, Moist Meridian, just published by Mammoth Books.

Sandra Stone began what she calls her “haywagon ride as a writer” with playwriting—at the age of five. She continues to write plays and short fiction as well as poetry, and has been awarded fellowhips in fiction from Literary Arts and from Breadloaf, and in playwriting from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2000 she had what she describes as “the shocking distinction of winning a national competition for an amazing honorarium, plus a two-week all-expenses-paid trip to Japan . . . by writing 24 words.” She is now collaborating with a composer on a libretto for a comic opera. Besides writing, Stone works as a conceptual artist in collaboration with architects “to create a poetic narrative in public interiors and the landscape,” and is an exhibited assemblagist with purchase awards for boxed works.

In 1996 Stone sent a 100-page sheaf of poems, none of them previously published or even submitted, to Cleveland State University’s annual manuscript competition and “was stunned by the news I’d won.” Her sheaf of poems became Cocktails with Brueghel at the Museum Café, which was then selected by Agha Shahid Ali as winner of the 1998 Oregon Book Award. More recently, Stone’s poetry has been recognized by the 2008 Dana Award for “mastery, substance, and inventive use of language.” A selection of 13 of her poems is forthcoming in the Fall 2010 issue of Midwest Quarterly, where she will be the featured poet. In Stayton, Stone will be reading both earlier and recent work, as well as poems by Mary Barnard, whom she came to know when working as editor for Breitenbush Books, which published Barnard’s Collected Poems.

Now in its eighth year, Stayton’s Second Sundays Series of Poetry Readings is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Marion Cultural Development Corporation, which also provides funding for donation of featured poets’ books to the Stayton Public Library. For more information, contact series coordinator Eleanor Berry at 503-859-3045 or eberry@wvi.com.

Sledgehammer Writing Contest

Calyx Books First Poetry Book Contest For Oregon Women Poets

Announcing Calyx Books First Poetry Book Contest For Oregon Women Poets!

The Sarah Lantz Memorial Poetry Book Prize

The first CALYX Books Poetry Book Prize in memory of Oregon poet Sarah Lantz will accept unpublished book length poetry manuscripts (75-125 pages) for consideration from Oregon women poets.

Submission period is September 1-31, 2009.

Send a complete unpublished book manuscript (75-125 pages) with biographical data and a $25 entry fee (payable in check or money order) to CALYX Poetry Book Prize, PO Box B, Corvallis, OR 97339.

Manuscripts will be read blind do not put your name and address on any pages, only on a separate cover letter. Final judge for the poetry book contest will be announced in July 2009. CALYX editors will read and select up to 10-15 finalists to send to the final judge who will select the prize winning manuscript. It is possible the judge could decide not to select a winner. The winning manuscript will be announced in February 2010.

Prize: The winner will receive a CALYX Books contract for publication of the manuscript in Fall 2010 and a $500 award.

Sarah Lantz was an Oregon poet whose first book, Far Beyond Triage, was published in October 2007 by CALYX Books. Sadly Sarah died from a brain tumor one month before its publication. CALYX editors worked closely with her through her illness to ensure her happiness with the final design of her book. Sarah was published by CALYX Journal, The Denver Quarterly, The Marlboro Review, Paris Atlantic, Manzanita Quarterly, Margie, and Sister Stew, among others. A secondary school teacher she also taught Poetry in the Schools in Oregon (through Literary Arts) and in Hawaii (through an NEA grant). She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College and was a member of the Pearl Poets (Portland, OR).

MEN AT WORDS-Poetry Reading at Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe

On Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 6:30 PM, local poets and authors in print, Robert Davies, David Filer, Henry Hughes, and Scot Siegel, will read their work, in conjunction with the 46th Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. This year's Festival visual arts theme is "Cutting Edges--the Mosaic". Joan Maiers hosts the event.

Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe
45 South State Street in downtown Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Free and open to the public.

Donations accepted to assist Little Artibonite Orphanage in Haiti.

Contact: 503-697-7097

Flash Choir call for members to perform William Stafford poems

The Flash Choir, a community choir in Portland, has just started working on a piece called "Strangers Together", which is a setting of ten of William Stafford's poems from Passwords. The piece is written by local composer Sarah Dougher, and will be performed in a variety of venues around the Portland area in late October 2009.

We would like to invite anyone who is interested in joining us to do so. We rehearse on Monday nights from 7-9pm, at 728 SW 1st Ave (the Pink Martini HQ). Learning these poems by singing them with other people is a pretty amazing way to lodge them in your consciousness.

Our choir was founded two years ago in service to PICA's TBA Festival, and has since done many public performances, including a setting of Robert Duncan's book, Caesar's Gate. We are inclusive and experimental, and welcome all comers.

Our blog is at www.flashchoir.blogspot.com.

For more information, and/or to get on our mailing list, please contact Sarah Dougher, sarahdougher@gmail.com, or 503-715-6731.

Call for food and cooking related haiku for anthology

Liz Nakazawa, editor of Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon, is seeking haiku related to food and cooking for an anthology.
She’s interested in the traditional 5-7-5 syllable Haiku form. Send submissions to liznakazawa@gmail.com. The deadline to submit is July 30.

Star Trek in the Park

Atomic Arts presents a LIVE free performance of the classic Star Trek episode “Amok Time” at the Woodlawn Park amphitheater. Witness Mr. Spock undergo the bizarre and brutal Vulcan marriage ritual of PON FARR as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise attempt to save him before it’s too late!!

Portland actors, accompanied by live music and effects, will bring this classic piece of television to life! Spend a day in the park, bring a picnic and BOLDLY GO!!

Dates are July 11, 12, 18, 19, 25 and 26 at 5 pm. For more info contact AdamRosko //at// Gmail.com.