Portland & Bay Area Poets Reading:

Clark County, WA Poet Laureate Christopher Luna and Toni Partington, co-hosts of the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA are celebrating their recent marriage with a honeymoon road trip and reading tour of California that will bring them to Berkeley, Monterey, and San Francisco. The late spoken word legend Jack McCarthy called Ghost Town Poetry “the best open mic between Tacoma and Berkeley.” Joining them will be Bay Area poets Neeli Cherkovski and Richard Loranger. Not to be missed!


Neeli Cherkovski
Richard Loranger
Christopher Luna
Toni Partington

+ a brief open mic

Hosted by Richard Loranger

signup 5 pm
start 5:15


PERFORMER BIOS

Neeli Cherkovski has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and Charles Bukowski, with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. Cherkovski produced the first San Francisco Poetry Festival, and in the early-1990s helped to found Café Arts Month, a yearly event celebrating San Francisco’s cafe culture. Cherkovski is the author of Whitman's Wild Children, a collection of essays about twelve poets he has known: Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Jack Micheline, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Cherkovski was a writer-in-residence at the New College of California in San Francisco. He taught literature and philosophy there until the school closed in 2008. His body of poetry includes Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Leaning Against Time, for which he was awarded the 15th Annual PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2005. Cherkovski's papers are housed at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, visual artist, and all around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the author of Poems for Teeth, as well as The Orange Book and nine chapbooks, including Hello Poems and the recent 6 Questions (Exot Books). Recent work can be found in Out of Our #17, in the anthology I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand (great weather for MEDIA), and in the online journals London Grip New Poetry (www.londongrip.co.uk) and The Marsh Hawk Review (www.marshhawkpress.org). You can find more about his work and scandals at https://www.richardloranger.com.

Clark County, WA Poet Laureate Christopher Luna is the co-founder, with Toni Partington, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press that serves Northwest writers. Together Luna and Partington edited Ghost Town Poetry volumes one and two, featuring poems from the popular open mic poetry reading series that Luna established in 2004. Luna’s books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight, GHOST TOWN, USA and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978. Recent publications include Bombay Gin, Unshod Quills, It’s Animal But Merciful, gape-seed, Take Out, Chiron Review, and Soundings Review. To learn more about Christopher Luna, please visit http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com.

Toni Partington lives and works as a poet, editor, publisher, visual artist, and writing coach in Vancouver, Washington. Toni has a B.A. in Social Work and an M.A. in Humanities with a focus on literature and literary editing. She is the author of two books of poetry, Jesus Is A Gas (2009), and Wind Wing (2010). Her poetry has been published in numerous journals including The Cascade Journal, VoiceCatcher (editions 3 and 4), OutwardLink.net, and Perceptions. She was Co-Editor for the 2011/2012 VoiceCatcher anthology of Pacific NW women writers. Toni is co-founder and editor of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing and small press imprint (www.printedmattervancouver.com). Toni co-hosts the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, a popular poetry reading series in Vancouver, WA founded by her husband Christopher Luna.