Featured Poets 2022​​
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'LIVE' features are Back.
Our schedule is filling up quickly, which is exciting. If you are interested in a feature,
please reach out to
we attempt to update this schedule within hours of scheduling a new feature.
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January 6, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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January 13, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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January 20, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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January 27, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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February 3, 2022
Featured Poet: Benjamin Schmitt
Benjamin Schmitt is the author of four books, most recently The Saints of Capitalism and Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sojourners, Antioch Review, The Good Men Project, Hobart, Columbia Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. A co-founder of Pacifica Writers’ Workshop, he has also written articles for The Seattle Times and At The Inkwell. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.
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February 10, 2022
Featured Poet: David Arthur
Just like in the song, David Arthur hopes your husband dies. David is a local poet
who haunts Everett Poetry Night, with years written in the back of your local pub.
He itches to escape his town so much he probably hates being called local. Having chronicled the
shit he has seen in chapbooks like Backhanded Compliments & Punished by the Pearl, he continues
to strip his world bare while a good whiskey waits on the stool next to him.
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February 17, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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February 24, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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March 3, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
Potential Feature on Hold - MS
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March 10, 2022
Featured Poet: Liza Wagner
Liza Wagner is a 26 year old filipina-american living in Los Angeles. Hailing from Everett, Washington, she graduated from Emerson College in 2018 1irh a -
you guessed it - film degree. Now when she is not producing, she's writhing thousands of drafts in her notepad, going to shows, and coercing her friends
into playing literally any kind of game. ...She's also a triple Sagittarius with a Capricorn stellium. Liz has two chapbooks: Manic Pixel Dream Girl (2021) and Water Your Flowers (2016)
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March 17, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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March 24, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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March 31, 2022
Featured Poet: Eric R. Kosarot
Eric R. Kosarot, born September 22, 1988 is father to his child Liam B. Kosarot. Eric started and continues tending sustainability minded gardens and farms in Snohomish and Skagit counties. In 2015, Eric graduated from WWU with a BA dubbed, “Earth Arts Journalism”. In Spring of 2017 Eric received a walk award at the Susan C. Boynton Poetry Contest. Eric’s poetry can be found in several chapbooks the latest of which is titled “Salal’s Voyage”. Eric regularly performs at Everett Poetry night hosted Thursdays at Sisters Restaurant.
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April 7, 2022
Featured Poet: Katerina Canyon
Katerina Canyon holds a Master of Arts in Law in Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and she holds a B.A. in English, International Studies, and Creative Writing from Saint Louis University. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
She is a 2021, 2020, and 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee. She served as the Sunland-Tujunga
California Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2004. During that time, she started and ran the Shouting
Coyote Poetry Festival, and she traveled the country promoting poetry and poetry events. Katerina Canyon’s work has been published in publications such as Meniscus, New York Times, and
Huffington Post United States and Germany. She has been a featured poet in multiple venues
across the country, including Beyond Baroque, Nuyorican, The Bowery Poetry Club and Chance Operations. She teaches poetry workshops to children and at universities. She has published three poetry chapbooks and two albums. Her latest work, Surviving Home, is available through Kelsay
Books. Prior to Surviving Home, she self-published, Changing the Lines, a joint project with her daughter Aja Canyon featuring poetry and art can be found online at Amazon. She currently lives in Seattle, Washington, where she can often be found writing poetry near Meadowbrook Pond.
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April 14, 2022
Featured Poet:
Michael Schmeltzer
with
Jessica Gigot & Carrie Beyer
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Michael Schmeltzer is a biracial author originally from Japan. He currently lives in Seattle where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Floating Bridge Press and as the 2022 Jack Straw Writing Program Curator. His most recent poetry book, Empire of Surrender, is the winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award. Along with Meghan McClure, he is the co-author of the nonfiction book A Single Throat Opens, a lyric exploration of addiction and family. His debut full-length Blood Song (Two Sylvias Press, 2016) was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry, the Julie Suk Award, and the Coil Book Award. His honors include a Jack Straw Fellowship, the Gulf Stream Award for Poetry, and Blue Earth Review's Flash Fiction Prize. He has been a finalist for the Four Way Books Intro and Levis Prizes, the Zone 3 Press First Book Prize,the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry from BkMk Press, the Jake Adam York Prize, as well as the OSU Press/The Journal Award in Poetry.
Jessica Gigot is a poet and farmer. She lives on a small sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, "Feeding Hour" (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020) won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper and a 2022 Jack Straw Writer. Her memoir, A Little Bit of Land, will be published by Oregon State University Press in August 2022.
Carrie Beyer is a poet and essayist. A mother of three school-aged children, she grew up in rural Kansas and now lives in the Pacific Northwest where she works as a bookseller at Eagle Harbor Book Company. Carrie holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University and is a 2022 Jack Straw Writer. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Apeiron Review, and as a contest finalist in Iron Horse Literary Review.
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April 21, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
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April 28, 2022
Featured Poet: Renée L. Roman Nose
Renee Roman Nose, MAIS, citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, is an activist, artist, poet, photographer and cultural anthropologist. Author of Sweet Grass Talking, published by Uttered Chaos Press, Roman Nose is inspired by historical and contemporary issues. Her CD, The River of Life, a Spoken Word CD with noted Native flute player, Peter Ali, is available later this spring in person, on Spotify and Amazon. She lives, and thrives, in the Pacific Northwest. You can reach her on Facebook: Renee Roman Nose, Instagram: renee_roman_nose or at www.reneeromannose.net.
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May 5, 2022
Featured Poet: Lennée Reid
Lennée Reid is a Creole author, multimedia artist, performance poet, activist, healer, and community organizer from Olympia, Washington. They have toured across America including many PSI Poetry Slams. She was Olympias 2018 Poetry Grand Slam Champion and first WOWPS representative in 2015. She is published in: "Inanna’s Ascent", "Single Mothers Speak on Patriarchy", and her chapbooks “Universal State of Mind'' and “Qi Woo Mojo Juju”, all available at thegirlgod.com, in addition to Works In Progress, Confluence Daily, and Spectrum Women, among others. Her spoken word albums "The Second Coming of Matriarchy" and "Crazy Thunder Medicine" are available at lenneereid.bandcamp.com Lennée has opened for Pussy Riot, and featured in Northwest Poetry Forum, "Artists Among Us" by the Olympia Film Collective, and "Dabbing with Washington Artists". She produced Awareni Culture Gathering, Olympia Witches March, Resonate Resolve, and Cascadia Poetry Group. She presented at Puget Sound Pagan Pride, GlowHenge - as featured on Evening Magazine, and was included in “Arising", an installation by Yoko Ono. Find more at #crazythundermedicine and https://crazythundermedicine.wixsite.com
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May 12, 2022
Featured Poet: Kelsey Taylor
Kelsey Taylor is a former figure skater with a fear of falling who has traded in her figure skates for poetry slams and leotards for leather jackets. When she’s not working her food service job, she is busy with her untitled hybrid memoir project based around her experiences of growing up with an alcoholic family member.
She currently splits her time between Marysville, WA and Portland OR. Sometimes the Silence Kills Me, her second poetry collection was released during the pandemic
with the help of her cat Olivia, who loves to assist by laying on the keyboard.
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May 19, 2022
Featured Poet: Everyone
An All Open Mic Evening
Potential Feature on Hold - LC
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May 26, 2022
Featured Poet: Steve Sibra
STEVE SIBRA is pleased to make his first public reading appearance in over two years, and happy for the opportunity to read among old friends at Everett Poetry Night. Steve has been a frequent reader at EPN over the past several years prior to COVID and now, with a brand new book of poetry out (SHOES FOR BABY from Swallow Publishing) there is a plethora of new material, to be read in public for the first time.
Steve grew up on a small farm in eastern Montana and furthered his education at the University of Montana. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals over the past three decades, along with newspaper articles and trade publications associated with his lifelong career in the collectible comic book hobby. Recent publications have included work in Chiron Review, Flint Hills Review, Dead Skunk, Art: One, and Dead Fern Press, among others.
In the course of compiling work for his new book, Steve had the amazing good fortune to become associated with a burgeoning writer and artist named Ayesha Khan. Ms. Khan, from Bangalore, India, has become a close friend and spiritual muse for Mr. Sibra and her influence has added a new level of intensity to his work.
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June 2, 2022
Featured Poet: Aiden Oliver Amatíst
Aiden Oliver Amatíst, simply known as, Ollie, has independently published
two books of poetry with a third being released at Everett Poetry Night on
June 2nd, 2022 entitled Where the Balloons Land. Following the pattern of his
2nd book Dead Flowers, Where the Balloons Land follows the life of a teenage
raver seeing clearly for the first time. Ollie has performed on Vashon Live,
Bite of Seattle, Rain City Slam, Cafe Zippy, and several more locations to come.
“His work stems from childhood with an indulgence into the modern lifestyle.”
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June 9, 2022
An All-Open Mic Evening
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June 16, 2022
Featured Poet: Bethany Reid
Bethany Reid’s two most recent books are Sparrow, which won the 2012 Gell Poetry Prize, and Body My House (2018), published by Seattle’s Goldfish Press. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, including the recent northwest favorite, For the Love of Orcas, as well as many print and on-line journals. Her poem, “The Last Time I Heard Her Play the Piano,” won the 22nd annual Poet Hunt contest, and her essay, “One Bad Poem,” appears in So, Dear Writer..., a new collection of It’s About Time craft-talks. Since retiring from full-time teaching at Everett Community College, Bethany has been at work on a novel, and has traveled to San Francisco, France, and Ireland to share her poems. She lives and writes in Edmonds, Washington, and blogs about all of it at http://www.bethanyareid.com/ .
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June 23, 2022
Featured Poet: Michael Haeflinger
Michael Haeflinger is the author of Low Static Rage (Blue Cactus Press, 2019), The Days Before (Dog On A Chain Press, 2014), and Love Poem for the Everyday (Dog On A Chain Press, 2011). He lives in Tacoma, where he directs Write253, a writing and printmaking organization for teens and young adults.
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June 30, 2022
Featured Poet: Dayna Patterson
Dayna Patterson is a Thea-curious recovering Mormon, fungophile, macrophotography enthusiast, and textile artist. She’s the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Honors include the Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award and the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky. Her creative work has appeared recently in EcoTheo, Kenyon Review, and Whale Road Review. She’s the founding editor (now emerita) of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry. In her spare time, she curates Poetry + Fungus, a pairing of poetry books and species from the fungal world. daynapatterson.com
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Washington State
Poet Laureate
July 7, 2022
Rena Priest
Rena Priest became the sixth Washington State Poet Laureate on April 14, 2021, and her term will run until March 31, 2023. A member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation, Priest will be the first Indigenous poet to be the state’s Poet Laureate. Priest’s literary debut, Patriarchy Blues, was honored with the 2018 American Book Award, and her most recent work is Sublime Subliminal. She succeeds Claudia Castro Luna, the previous poet laureate. Priest’s literary debut, Patriarchy Blues, was honored with the 2018 American Book Award, and her most recent work is Sublime Subliminal. Priest’s work can be found in Poetry Northwest, Pontoon Poetry, Verse Daily, Poem-a-Day at Poets.org, and elsewhere.
She has taught Comparative Cultural Studies and Contemporary American Issues at Western Washington University and Native American Literature at Northwest Indian College. Priest holds a BA in English from Western Washington University and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Bellingham, Washington.
Each laureate puts their own unique focus on the position, and Priest focuses on two primary goals during her term: celebrating poetry in Washington’s tribal communities, and using poetry to increase appreciation of the natural world and the threats facing it.
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From This Point Forward
NOW on MONDAYS
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July 11, 2022
Matthew Lane Brouwer
Blending music, poetry, wit and wisdom from his own tangled poetic journey, Matthew weaves together a unique and unforgettable poetry experience that has been enchanting audiences for over a decade. Bridging the worlds of spoken word and literary poetry, he has performed throughout the US and been featured in numerous literary, visual and performance arts showcases. Matthew leads retreats for teens and adults, co-founded the Whatcom Juvenile Justice Creative Writing Project, and has facilitated writing groups for the homeless and for people experiencing chronic medical conditions. He has one collection of poems, Stories We Must Tell, and an audio recording in the works.
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July 18, 2022
Robert Arthur Reeves
Robert Arthur Reeves was born in Urbana, Illinois and grew up (so to speak) in the Boston area. As a baby he sat on Carl Sandburg's lap. Allen Ginsberg recommended his teenage poetry to Gregory Corso. He lived for several decades in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he taught philosophy and religion at the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College. He currently lives in Bremerton, Washington with his partner Sari Krosinsky. His most recent poetry collections are "Failed Windows: Selected Poems 2010-2019" and "Radiance: Poems 2019-2020."
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July 25, 2022
Elizabeth Vignali
Elizabeth Vignali is the author of the poetry collection House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021) and three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Poetry Northwest, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in the Pacific Northwest on the land of the NoxwsʼáÊ”aq and Xwlemi peoples, where she works as an optician, produces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review. You can find her on Instagram at @Random_Acts_of_Lineness or at her website elizabethvignali.com.
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August 1, 2022
Sari Krosinsky
Sari Krosinsky is a queer autistic writer. Ze has written four books of poetry, “Meditating in the Dark” (2020), “Courting Hunger” (2015), “A God’s Life” (2015) and “god-chaser” (CW Books 2012) and co-authored a chapbook, “Yossele: a tale in poems” (2010), with Robert Arthur Reeves. Ze received an M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Ze lives in Bremerton, WA, with zir partner, Reeves. Find zir poetry at outerchildpoetry.com.
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August 8, 2022
Shane Guthrie
Shane Guthrie’s poetry has been alternatively called
‘devastating, humorous, radioactive and amusingly domestic’.
Popular topics include Dealing with Low Self-Esteem, Amusing anecdotes about childhood, why love is really actually pretty hard, why love is really actually pretty great.
He resides Duvall, Washington most of the time
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August 15, 2022
Joseph Green
Joseph Green lives in Longview, Washington, where he taught English at Lower Columbia College for twenty-five years. His publications include His Inadequate Vocabulary (Signpost Press, 1987), Deluxe Motel (Signpost, 1991), Greatest Hits:1975—2000 (Pudding House, 2001), The End of Forgiveness, which won the Floating Bridge Poetry Chapbook Award for 2001, That Thread Still Connecting Us (MoonPath Press, 2012), and What Water Does at a Time Like This (MoonPath, 2015). At the Peasandcues Press, he and his wife, Marquita, produce limited-edition letterpress poetry broadsides and ephemera, and at the C.C. Stern Type Foundry, newly relocated in Clatskanie, Oregon, he is involved in casting the type for letterpress printing.
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August 22, 2022
Jeremy Springsteed
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Jeremy Springsteed is a barista living in Seattle. He was one of the founders of the Breadline Performance Series and a member of ReDrum poetry collective. His work has been recently published in The Book Of Black an anthology by Wingless Dreamer, SPREAD, The Paragon Press, Pidgeonholes, Underwood, Pageboy, Internet Void, and Another New Calligraphy . His full length collection A Guide To Getting Lost was released in 2022 from Cyber Wit.
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August 29, 2022
Gary Wade
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September 5, 2022
Nathan Topmkins
Nathan Tompkins was born alongside the Kootenai River in North Idaho. He was a very unruly child and so his mother decided to teach him to read at a young age, just to save her own sanity. She introduced him to the works of Coleridge, Yeats, Frost, Dickinson, Poe, Tolkien, and many others. When he was 13, he met a novelist and started writing himself. At that point, he realized he was screwed.
Since then, he has been consistently emptying venues through out the Pacific Northwest. He has also found, much to his surprise, his works published in many fine publications such as Hobo Camp Review, Quail Bell Magazine, Windfall, and Into the Void. His latest chapbook, Howl Drunkenly at the Moon, was published by Alien Buddha Press in July, 2018, but all remaining copies were needed to solve The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020.
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September 12, 2022
Duane Kirby Jensen
Duane Kirby Jensen is a painter and a poet. He has exhibited and performed at numerous venues throughout the Pacific Northwest since 1989. He has been called an ‘outsider artist.’
His work centers on isolation and its gravitational effect on emotion. He also explores the fragility of identity and the ease in which it can disappear. He often takes his subjects to the edge of madness. His work evokes those emotions that linger beneath the surface, which underscores the narrative line being explored. This stems from his interest in Film Noir.
This fragility of identity is also explored in his landscapes where cities and other man-made structures have weathered away, victims of climate change due to environmental abuse.
He was inspired to paint as a child while he watched his grandmother and grandaunt paint scenes of their Stanwood, WA community. He comes from a long line of painters, photographers, carvers, inventors and storytellers.
In 2013 he received the
Mayors Art’s Award,
being named:
Artist in the Community for his
Artistic Excellence &
His Contributions
to Everett Cultural Vitality.
Regarding his painting, he explains his objective. “Within each painting, I want to capture the image the way a filmmaker would—one frame at a time. I treat individuals, groups and landscapes the same way. I attempt to documents the inner dialog of a person or place. Striping away their mask. I want to touch their emotional core, feel their turmoil, understand their agony, and swim within the isolation of each subject.”
Duane Kirby Jensen is an Everett, WA based poet and artist.
artofduanekirbyjensen.com/
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September 19, 2022
Ru Otto
Talking about her new book, Dancing with Death (2022), Ru says, "
I wouldn’t say that I am obsessed, but as my friends and acquaintances disappear one by one into the fire or into the ground, I have become even more curious about where they went and when will I follow. Writing poetry has always been a way for me to examine my most private self and get to the root of who and what I really am. This exploration of my psyche often leads me to intense and sometimes brutally honest word crafting. This volume of poetry is an example of some of my poetic responses to excursions into this troubling territory.
Home – Ru Otto’s Crone’s Nest Enterprises in Seattle, WA
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September 26, 2022
Leah Mueller
Leah Mueller is the author of ten prose and poetry books. Her work appears in Rattle, Midway Journal, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. It has also been featured in trees, shop windows in Scotland, poetry subscription boxes, and literary dispensers throughout the world. Her flash piece, "Land of Eternal Thirst" will appear in the 2022 edition of Sonder Press' "Best Small Fictions" anthology. Visit her website at www.leahmueller.org.
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October 3, 2022
Mark L Anderson
Mark L Anderson is a writer living in Spokane, Washington where he served as Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019. He co-founded the Broken Mic reading series and has traveled across the U.S. reading poems in coffee shops and living rooms. His first book of poems, Scarecrow Oracle, was published by Korrektiv in 2022. He works as a barista at a vegan bakery and he sincerely hopes you enjoyed your latte. It has a heart on it.
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October 10, 2022
PETER LUDWIN
Peter Ludwin is the recipient of a Literary Fellowship from Artist Trust and
the W.D. Snodgrass Award for Endeavor and Excellence in Poetry. His first
book, A Guest in All Your Houses, was published in 2009 by Word Walker
Press. His second collection is Rumors of Fallible Gods, a two-time finalist
for the Gival Press Poetry Award that was published in 2013 by Presa Press.
His third book, Gone to Gold Mountain, was published in 2016 by Moon-
Path Press and subsequently nominated for a Washington State Book Award.
In 2017 the Before Columbus Foundation nominated it for an American
Book Award. His most recent manuscript, Medicine Crow, was a finalist in
both 2020 and 2021for the Wandering Aengus Press Book Award.
A fourteen-year participant in Mexico’s San Miguel Poetry Week, where he
has studied under such noted poets as Mark Doty, Tony Hoagland, Joseph
Stroud and Robert Wrigley, Ludwin won The Comstock Review’s 2016
Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, judged by Marge Piercy. That same
year he was the Second Place winner of the Paulann Petersen Poetry Award,
and a finalist in poetry for both the Tucson Festival of Books Literary
Awards and the Pangaea Poetry Prize. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee,
he received nominations in 2016 from MoonPath Press and Connecticut
River Review.
His work has appeared in many journals, including Atlanta Review, The
Bitter Oleander, The Comstock Review, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod,
North American Review and Prairie Schooner, to name a few. A world
traveler who has journeyed by canoe to visit remote Indian families in the
Amazon Basin of Ecuador, hiked in the Peruvian Andes, thumbed for rides
in Greece, bargained for goods in the markets of Marrakech and Istanbul and
survived debilitating illness in China and Tibet, he is also accomplished on
acoustic blues guitar and autoharp. He lives in Kent, Washington, where he
works in a greenhouse for a local nonprofit that helps immigrant farmers
grow organic food for themselves and the community.
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October 17, 2022
Scott Ferry
I grew up in Huntington Beach, CA on a steady diet of swim workouts, shredded beef tacos, and skiing. Both of my parents taught high school, so I thought I should do the same. Not a sustainable career for me. My sister became a professor, and a damn good one. I moved to Seattle, became a Licensed Acupuncturist. Barely paid for itself, even though the ancient grid of Qi still informs my body. Lifeguarded for many years. Found nursing and never regretted it. I now work for the most worthy recipients of respect, our Veterans. I married a superior being and made a brilliant female sprig. They are both the reason and the reward.
I began writing poetry in high school to mostly try to communicate a lack of meaning and a yearning for depth. After college I began frequenting Laguna Poets, and other vital readings in mid-90s Orange County. This few years fed me, taught me. I began publishing in Blue Satellite, Spillway, Inevitable Press. My father passed away during this same time and colored the air with charcoal and opened a light around people. I may have had a spiritual awakening, or I may have slid off the visual plane for a bit. When I moved to Seattle I read in local readings and published in Seattle Review, Crab Creek Review, Poetry Superhighway, Pontoon, Bitter Oleander. I wrote hundreds of poems, some were actually decent. I married, divorced. Met my present and beautiful wife and we moved back to Huntington Beach for a long five years while she became a doctor and I became a nurse.
We returned to Seattle when our daughter was one. We bought a house with a sprawling yard and a view of the Olympics off our deck. I began writing again, publishing in Radius, Cobalt, Chaleur, Moon Tide, Pontoon, Slippery Elm, Cultural Weekly, among others. My chapbook Book of 24 streets was a semifinalist in the Floating Bridge contest in 2017. I was a finalist in the Write Bloody Poetry Book Contest in 2019. My collection, The only thing that makes sense is to grow is now available from Moon Tide Press. My second book, Mr. Rogers kills fruit flies, is now available from Main St. Rag. In 2020, my son was born the same day as my father, just 88 years later. I received a Pushcart nomination from Misfit in November 2020 for the poem “Dispersal.” My third book, These Hands of Myrrh, was published by Kelsay Books in Fall 2021. My minichap The Sea of Marrow came out in late 2021 and I have 2 more books upcoming for 2022: Skinless in the Cereal Aisle from Impspired and fishmirror from Alien Buddha. And I have this silly website, of course.
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October 24, 2022
Kelli Russell Agodon
Kelli Russell Agodon’s newest book is Dialogues with Rising Tides from Copper Canyon Press. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. She is an avid paddleboarder and hiker who lives in a rural seaside community in Washington State on traditional lands of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people. Kelli teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program and the Rainier Writing Workshop is currently part of a project between local land trusts and artists to help raise awareness for the preservation of land, ecosystems, and biodiversity called Writing the Land. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com
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October 31, 2022
Greg Bee
Greg Bee is magic, art and kindness. They use the medium of love to help people connect. The poetry they write, and the words they speak on stage are a vehicle for this journey. If you miss out on Greg in Everett, hear Greg perform at these other fine venues: Broken Mic in Spokane on 11/2 and Psanctum open Mic in Portland on 11/7
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November 7, 2022
Robinson Bolkum
Mr. Bolkum was raised in a fieldstone manse on the Northeastern outskirts of Rothbury. His mother Geraldine & father Monroe constructed oddities of scrap-wood, of metal & fabric. They traded these things for provisions, as often as motorists intruded. His brothers Lucius, Guthrie & Jerome would hunt rabbit at the break of dawn. They would then (often) dance-about in their skivvies at local covered bridges & silos (& such). Sisters (Eleanor & Wilma) were timidly muscular, & brutalized pert city-boys, in ways that these fellas enjoyed. Young Robinson lived as a self-styled ascetic, singing show tunes (on an ox-cart). He slept in grottoes, garages & sororities. At nineteen, he authored a Bronze Age legend, but after that his time-travel-pocket-watch broke. Always the inventor, he applied for a patent on the (nearly spectacular) tandem unicycle. He now lives in Sussex, with a bar maid, & smithy, where they author greeting cards at a rooftop café. [This biographical sketch is the About The Author segment of Concatenation: Book Three]
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November 14, 2022
Mende Smith
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Mende Smith is the author of three collections of poetry Hollywoodland (Noble Swine Press) and Veritas Cabaret (Lummox Press) and The Lauren Bacall of Bathrooms (Emerald City Poetics) Since 2010, more than thirty additional pieces of Smith’s works have been featured in anthology, small press projects, and Lit Zines (poem and prose form), as well as a number of essays, feature magazine articles, and interviews. Smith’s poems have been performed or received public readings in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, and words have been a part of her life since her first divorce, over two decades ago. Smith dabbles in workshopping new voices, authoring TedX talks, Pecha Kucha presentations in support of uncompromising creatives as a form of mental health support. Writing memoirs, ghostwriting projects, script treatments, and one-acts, Smith studied poetics and journalism in pursuit of her writing career and authored a debut novel Emerald City in 2019. Today, she interviews artists, and authors, collects poems and daydreams, molding them into content for assorted publications, including her own press, Emerald City Poetics, in Portland, Oregon.
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November 21, 2022
BOOK RELEASE PARTY
TRUE HERESIES
Michael Daley
Michael Daley is the author of a book of essays, Way Out There (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2007), and several books of poems and translations. His most recent collection of poems is Reinhabited: New & Selected Poems (Dos Madres, 2022). He is a retired teacher, and the publisher of Empty
Bowl.
Praise FOR MICHAEL DALEY’S PREVIOUS BOOKS
Born With: There is a mystery at the core of Daley’s work; one can’t guess where his poems are going to go. He is an artisan of the present moment, where poems weave the political, the social and the personal, as he moves easily between the narrative and the lyric. —Joseph Stroud
Born With: His pragmatic narrative pull and extraordinary lyrical power works in another dimension, a more ethereal plane. Some poets are born with an internalized muse, a muse who has a will of her own and a set of contrary aesthetics. Daley is one of these hosts. The lucky bastard.
—Dennis Daly, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
Even rock-hard childhoods and relationships can be redeemed, Daley reminds us, as he mines his past for the gold-flecked, shimmering moments that are in abundance in this collection.
—Holly J. Hughes
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The poems in, To Curve reenter the momentous with humility and empathy.
—Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Poetry Flash
I can confidently recommend Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest as both a notable instance of
postmodern style and an extraordinarily rich quarry of poetic invention.
—Martin Abramson, Book/Mark Quarterly Review
The poems in Of a Feather, ranging from complex serial poems to haibun and haiku, once again remind me of what a fine and modest poet does in this dark world–he praises, he sings.
—Sam Hamill
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November 28, 2022
Kevin J Craft
Kevin Craft is the executive editor of Poetry NW Editions. His books include Vagrants & Accidentals (University of Washington Press, 2017) and Solar Prominence (Cloudbank Books, 2005), and five volumes of the anthology Mare Nostrum, an annual collection of Italian translation and Mediterranean-inspired writing (Writ in Water Press, 2004 – 2009). His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in such places as Poetry, AGNI, Verse, Ninth Letter, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, and West Branch.
Craft lives in Seattle, and directs both the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College and the University of Washington’s Summer Creative Writing in Rome Program.
He has been teaching poetry classes at EvCC since 1996!
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December 5, 2022
Raúl Sanchez
Raúl is the former City of Redmond Poet Laureate. He teaches poetry both in English and Spanish through the Seattle Arts and Lectures (WITS), and Jack Straw Cultural programs. He volunteered for PONGO Teen Writing at the Juvenile Detention Center.
He teaches creative writing through Path With Art since 2019. During the 2021 Pandemic he created the bi-weekly “Poetry in the Park”, a neighborhood Poetry event at the Meadowbrook Pond in NE Seattle, which used to be Theodore Roethke’s old neighborhood. The same year he installed and old curio cabinet now known as the “Poetry Box” on 39th. This year he served as a judge for the creative writing contest at the Holocaust Center for Humanity and he will be the judge for the Vancouver-Portland regional bus system: “POETRY on BUSES 2022” area served by C-Tran. His second collection "When There Were No Borders" was released by Flower Song Press, McAllen Texas July 2021
https://poetraulsanchez.com
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December 12, 2022
Kilam Telaviv
"While many poems come off like a lecture, or someone airing out their grievances, Kilam’s poetry is a relationship. His work grapples with the harsh realities of the world with caution, ferocity and honesty. He has been featured in the Seattle Times, the critically acclaimed book "Black Imagination '' and if you look REALLY hard, you might see his cameo in the 2022 film "KIMI". His latest chapbook "Failing Gracefully" is available at Barnes and Noble.