Thursday, August 18, 2016

9/17: Coleman, Collis, Rhodes & Sand @ Roll Up

The Switch is super happy to host this special event!

Switch No. 36: Jen Coleman, Stephen Collis and Kaia Sand-- with a special pop up show of paintings by Jeremy Okai Davis!

When: Saturday, September 17, 7 p.m. 

Where: Roll Up Photo Studio and Gallery, 1715 SE Spokane St. Portland


After reading her newly released book We Denizens (Furniture Press, July 2016) Poet Graham Foust dubbed Jen Coleman the "bittersweet cartoonist" of the heart. Her first book, Psalms for Dogs and Sorcerers, was selected by Dara Weir for the Bob Kaufman book award from Trembling Pillow Press in 2013. Jen is part of the Spare Room reading collective and works for Oregon Environmental Council. 








Stephen Collis’s many books of poetry include The Commons (Talon Books 2008; 2014), On the Material (Talon Books 2010—awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), DECOMP (with Jordan Scott—Coach House 2013), and Once in Blockadia (Talon Books 2016). He has also written two books of literary criticism, a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, and a novel. In 2014 he was sued for $5.6 million by U.S. energy giant Kinder Morgan, whose lawyers read his writing in court as “evidence.” He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.

In the work of Jeremy Okai Davis, color use and fidelity to his subjects make them feel alive, but without being too literal. The work feels really light at first glance, but on closer examination of text and posture, the work is full of conflict, an exploration of the contrast between the shiny, smiling exterior that is frequently presented on the surface and the inner, self-conscious, status obsessed mind state that so many of us endure beneath it all.


Leo Rhodes is a Street Roots vendor and board member, and a community organizer with experience organizing self-managed tent cities and indoor and outdoor shelters in both Seattle and Portland. He is a military veteran and brings the experience of homelessness and the Native American perspective as a member of the Pima tribe. Leo is currently completing a memoir told through poetry and prose, as well as a play based on the founding of Right2DreamToo.


Kaia Sand is the author of the newly released A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Up Money that Lost its Puff (Tinfish Press 2016) as well as Remember to Wave (Tinfish Press 2010), and interval (Edge Books), a Small Press Traffic book of the year in 2004; and co-author with Jules Boykoff of Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and Public Space (Palm Press, 2008). With Garrick Imatani, she was an artist-in-residence from 2013-2015 at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center, responding to historical surveillance files on local political activists. This past spring she exhibited Moth, Flame, Desire, at the Portland Community College Cascade Gallery, after serving in the Despina Artist Residency at Largo das Artes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She works across genres and media, dislodging poetry from the book into more unconventional contexts; she documents work at kaiasand.net.



Wednesday, August 17, 2016

9/9: Carrie Hunter @ Littman Gallery with Ben Glas

We are very excited to co-host a reading with the Littman Gallery by Bay Area poet Carrie Hunter, as a part of an exhibition of a sound work by artist Ben Glas. Please join us for Switch no. 37!
Reading by Carrie Hunter
When:
Friday, September 9, 7:00 p.m.
Where:
Littman Gallery at Portland State University, 1825 SW Broadway, Smith Memorial Student Union (SMSU), Portland.
Ben Glas Ing Ing (Variation 3) 
On view
September 9, 12 – 4 p.m.
Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, edits the chapbook press, ypolita press, and is on the editorial board of Black Radish Books. Her latest chapbook Vice/Versa recently came out with Dancing Girl Press. Her full-length collection, The Incompossible, was published in 2011 by Black Radish Books, and another, Orphan Machines, came out in 2015. She lives in San Francisco and teaches ESL. 

Ben Glas is an interdisciplinary artist and composer based in Portland, Oregon. Glas' work focuses intently on egalitarian proprioception, stasis/rush within digital systems, and notions of spacetime. Working extensively with sine-waves and unconventional softwares, Glas engages physical spaces and their ephemeral inhabitants to remind participants of a momentary sonic awareness within space and time.  

Ing Ing (Variation 3) is an experiential tonal composition that merges time and space, proprioception and movement. Utilizing open-ended drones and acoustic beating, its installation space becomes an interactive 3D album; the choice of movement and composition are in the hands and minds of each individual listener, as they sculpt their own experience in space.  

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Conrad, Carr, Buuck 6/19 @ Ford Food and Drink

Switch No. 35: CAConrad, Emily Carr and David Buuck

When: Sunday, June 19 at 6:30 p.m.

Where: Ford Food and Drink, SE 11th Ave. and Division, Portland, OR


CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.  He is the author of eight books of poetry and essays, the latest ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books) is the winner of the 2015 Believer Magazine Book Award.  He is a Pew Fellow and has also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, and Ucross.  For his books and details on the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films, 2016), please visit http://CAConrad.blogspot.com


Emily Carr says she “writes murder mysteries that turn into love poems that are sometimes (by her McSweeney’s editors, for example) called divorce poems.” She has lived all over the world and is the author of several collections and chapbooks of poems. After she got an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, she took a doctorate in ecopoetics at the University of Calgary. These days, she’s the program director of the low-residency MFA in creative writing at Oregon State University-Cascades. Her newest book, Whosoever Has Let a Minotaur Enter Them, Or a Sonnet—, is available from McSweeney's. It inspired a beer of the same name, now available at the Ale Apothecary.


David Buuck is a writer and performer who lives in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics, and co-founder and editor of Tripwire, a journal of poetics. Recent publications include SITE CITE CITY (Futurepoem, 2015) and An Army of Lovers, co-written with Juliana Spahr (City Lights, 2013). A Swarming, A Wolfing is forthcoming from Roof Books in 2016. He teaches composition at Mills College and is an organizer for the Adjuncts Union, SEIU local 1021.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Halpern, Haynes, Jensen 5/7 @ IPRC

Switch No. 34: Rob Halpern of Ypsilanti, MI, and Portland's own Lamarra Haynes and Rachael Jensen.

When: Saturday, May 7, doors 7 pm, event at 7:30 sharp$5 

Where: IPRC, 1001 SE Division St, Portland, Or

Common Place (Ugly Duckling Presse 2015) is Rob Halpern's most recent book of poetry. Other titles include Music for Porn (Nightboat 2013), Disaster Suites (Palm Press 2009), and Rumored Place (Krupskaya 2006). Together with Taylor Brady, he also co-authored the book-length poem Snow Sensitive Skin, which has been reissued by Displaced Press. Recent essays and translations appear in Chicago Review, Journal of Narrative Theory, and The Claudius App. Rob currently splits his time between San Francisco and Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he teaches at Eastern Michigan University and Women's Huron Valley Prison.


Lamarra Haynes began developing her poetic voice last year when her professor, Kaia Sand, gave her the space to express her coursework through a poetic lens. Lamarra’s poems generally emerge from political analysis and then she attempts to make the political personal; she attempts to understand how big lofty political decisions have affected her own life. Her poem “#FreddieGray” is published in the academic journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.


Rachael Jensen is a writer living in Portland Oregon. She has been a contributor to Publication Studio, Poor Claudia, & SNOOT Books.


Sunday, March 13, 2016

Landers, Sand and Masigat 3/26 @ Roll Up Photo Studio + Gallery

The Switch is proud to host a reading by Susan Landers of Brooklyn, who has a new book just out from Roof, along with our own Kaia Sand, and music from Portland's Kelly Anne Masigat!

When: Saturday, March 26, doors 7 pm, event at 7:30 sharp. $5 

Where: Roll-Up Photo Studio + Gallery, 1715 SE Spokane St., Portland


Susan Landers' latest book, FRANKLINSTEIN, tells the story of one Philadelphia neighborhood wrestling with the legacies of colonialism, racism, and capitalism. She is also the author of 248 MGS., A PANIC PICNIC and COVERS. Her chapbooks include 15: A Poetic Engagement with the Chicago Manual of Style and What I Was Tweeting While You Were On Facebook. She was the founding editor of the journal Pom2 and has an MFA from George Mason University. She lives in Brooklyn. You can follow her on Twitter @suelanders. 





Kaia Sand writes investigative poetry that is often experiential and material. She is the author of three poetry collections—Interval (Edge Books), Remember to Wave (Tinfish Press), and A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Money that Lost Its Puff  (forthcomingTinfish Press), which includes a magic show she created about the global financial crisis. Sand co-authored Landsapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and Public Space; and created poetry sign projects as well as a series of poetry walks.  She served in a residency with artist Garrick Imatani at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center, commissioned by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, where they explored surveillance police filed on political activists. Sand built a poetic series, “She Had Her Own Reason for Participating,” sledgehammering copper cards. This past autumn, she served in a Despina Artist residency at Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro. This winter, she had a solo exhibition at the Cascade Gallery, Portland Community College. More info: http://kaiasand.net/



Kelly Anne Masigat's music is country-tinged, coal fired, quiet and intense. A multi-instrumentalist, with roots all along the West Coast, Kelly writes songs that are meditative, elegant and often romantic. Her first full length record will be released this year. https://kellyannemasigat.bandcamp.com/
Photo by Elisabeth Wilson.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Simon, Ruoff, & Jet Black Pearl: 2/21 @ IPRC

San Francisco poet Aaron Simon comes to read for the Switch alongside local poet Lindsay Ruoff, with a very special musical performance by Jet Black Pearl. . .

When: Sunday, February 21, doors 7 pm, reading at 7:30 sharp. FREE  

Where: IPRC, 1001, SE Division, PDX



Aaron Simon is the author of Carrier (Insurance Editions, 2006), Periodical Days (Green Zone Editions, 2007), Senses Himself (Green Zone Editions, 2014), and Rain Check Poems (BlazeVOX [books], 2015). His poems have appeared in several publications, including Like Musical Instruments: 83 Contemporary American Poets (Broadstone Books, 2014), Shiny, Exquisite Corpse, Sal Mimeo, Across the Margin, Nowhere, and Harriet the Blog. He studied poetry and philosophy at The New School in NYC, and has lived between San Francisco and Brooklyn since 1999.



Lindsay Allison Ruoff lives in Portland, OR where she works at an elementary school. She is the author and creator of the ebook MOOD RING and the very small chapbook MIRACLE ROMANCE. You can see more of what she's made at: laruoff.tumblr.com.





Jet Black Pearl - This world wild accordion diva from the port of Amsterdam started as a graphic designer and street musician in New York before she moved to France, from where she performed on more than a thousand stages all over Europe. She recently moved to Portland, ready to experience new adventures with (or without) her accordion. http://jetblackpearl.com

"The most eccentric and equally the most talented woman you will see in Edinburgh this month." 
- Broadway Baby, Edinburgh Fringe Festival




LONE STAR

A traffic camera flashed
between Dallas-Forth Worth
and the dead moon in a jar            
with the perils of youth

Motion itself
a kind of due process
as the feeling of flight risk
conspires with air

Night falls hard on the plains
erasing the lakes
where the new summer opens
its synoptical lens
by Aaron Simon
 *

from REFLESH

I wanted to intensify my ability
to totally inhabit the body
to do it to death
I wanted to be or do
at least one thing forever
but I’ve misplaced my credentials
when we move to enunciate violence
only the curvatures of error are visible
embarrassingly autocorrects everything into
nothingness

by Lindsay Ruoff

 *

 
 Jet Black Pearl live in La Vista Theater 
in Montpellier, with Mic Lee (beat box) 
& Laurent Monju (sousaphone), 2014.