Walking isn't always walking.

Tomorrow I am working a men's fashion show. I haven't changed careers, there just happens to be a men's fashion show at Lotties, and as such I was asked by my supervisor to "try to look cute, for once." For me this will mean that I probably put on blazer, and throw some goo in my hair to dewispify it. Plausibly shave. Oh! The effort.
For the record: I have walked in one fashion show, in my life, it was fun, I wish I'd gotten to keep the suit.

Here are some cool things! One is a strange and mesmerizing story about a bathtub over at Wonder and Risk. Another is the simple fact that Ryan A. Johnson is writing again, and well. Keeping up with George Parrotian narratives, while sharpening the prose-poem technique. Paul E. Nelson wrote a fairly comprehensive review of the Cascadia Poetry Festival. I didn't make all the panels, but the mainstage stuff I saw was engaging and interesting, the bookfair was cool and the events I helped throw together went mainly pretty smooth. A more comprehensive review on my part is, I think, probably not necessary.

The sun is out and from this library view Seattle looks as sci-fi as it ever has, ever growing more so.

ZAPP as connector

the Zine Archive and Publishing Project is moving out of the Richard Hugo House. This is huge. For near-on ten years now, that's been a goal of ZAPP's, at times a casual, "wouldn't it be nice", at others a more pressing concern, but due to a variety of issues, resets, and general struggle I won't get into here (but may later) it hasn't happened til now.

This. Is. Huge.

It is not overestimating it to say that ZAPP has likely been the most important of places in my re-entry into Seattle. In 2009 I started volunteering weekly, while I was still living in Stanwood, working hanging Christmas Lights, at ZAPP's open hours. In 2010 I accepted an internship writing PR (which went through Hugo House) and helping co-ordinate volunteers. This culminated in my Internship Show, Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest, which re-sparked my interest in visual art (an interest that goes through it's own series of languishes and resets.) Many of the new, lasting friendships, artistic collaborations and  I've made have been through ZAPP-- I met Bryan Edenfield, without whom there'd be no book of Filthy Jerry Poems at ZAPP. I was in a writer's group with him, Rainey Warren, and Emily Wittenhagen the latter of whom gave me a job at the Hugo House Bar, which in turn helped me to get my foot in the door in Seattle's bar scene (From the OTHER side of the bar. please.) It's where I met Lindsey Tibbot, who'd go on to marry David Stone (both of whom put me up when a spot I was going to live fell through at the last minute.)If you factor in that employment as an outgrowth of ZAPP, I also met Marty, Brian McGuigan, Paul Nelson and many others not-too-indirectly, through ZAPP.

I'm super stoked to be reading at their Release Party. I'd say more but the Library is closing.

"I now understand panic attacks as a bitter struggle between myself and the homunculus."--B.E.

Tonight I'm reading with Emily Wittenhagen on the Google Hangout reading series The Casserole, hosted by Chelsea Kurnick, whose been running this reading from her Cap Hill apartment for several months (a year?) with an impressive consistency and range of readers.
Pretty stoked to be reading. You can find it on Google Hangouts, or http://www.youtube.com/users/thecasserolereading, if you can't see it live, it'll be up there. I'm currently eating Cheezits, printing out poems and listening to Bryan Edenfield talk about fighting his homunculus. Here's a few good ones from recent months:

Sometimes the full link is prettier. Like a half-eaten train.

So, let's be generous with our linkage. I recently got four of my pieces posted up at Wonder And Risk:
http://wonderandrisk.com/where-it-really-feels-like-a-city-and-three-more-poems-by-graham-isaac/

I really like what that they're doing over at WAR; bridging coverage of comedy, performance art, poetry, indie sports (pencil fighting? bike polo? what-have-you. there's a "poetry and sports" section), and theatre in a way that makes a lot of intuitive sense, but doesn't get done that often. at least not around here.

Also! Stoked to have received a Director's Scholarship to this year's Litfuse: http://www.litfuse.us/
Now I just have to figure out how to get there, where to stay in Tieton, stuff like that.

Likewise, in case you missed it, you can still listen to an interview that Steve Barker did with Bryan Edenfield and I at OM: http://ordinarymadness.org/?p=442
We were fascinating.

And as always, support Babel Salvage or buy Filthy Jerry's Guide to Parking Lots here: http://babelsalvage.com/

Filthy Jerry and the Infomotional Video

the kickstarter to get Babel/Salvage off the ground has already reached it's goal, but as is often wisdom with such things, B/S were lowballing it. A bit more cash and money can be put away for works by forthcoming authors ( a few of which I know are in the pipeline, but those aren't mine to announce) and things like bus tickets for touring and whatnot. Get to kickstarting over here.

The last readings wherein the "2012" piece will be relevant:

Occurring:
November 1st. 7pm, $5. Bellingham, Wa.
Grown-Ass Poets Society @ the Green Frog Tavern
w/ Shane Guthrie.

November 18th. 4pm, free. Seattle, Wa.
Babel/Salvage Showcase @ Hollow Earth Radio.
w/Bryan Edenfield, Terra Leigh Bell, Evan J. Peterson.

December 5th. 7pm, free. Duvall, Wa
Duvall Poetry Night @ The Match Coffee and Wine Bar.
w/Open Mic.

In addition, I will be performing two Christmas-related shows, one dark, one light, but neither will contain the 2012 poem, which is probably the best thing I wrote in 2012. Natch. Or at least the most beloved-in-performance. Hopes are to have the new chapbook, Filthy Jerry's Guide to Parking Lots, available by the 5th of December, if not the 18th of November. Progress on that has been thundering along nicely.

It would be great to see you-- the nebulous, churning, "you"-- at any or all of these readings, if you can make it. The 18th will also be podcasted via the talents and generosity of the fine folks at Hollow Earth Radio. On the 1st I'll be previewing some of the new book, but also giving rousing performances of some of the Swansea Morning Coming Down pieces that, well, I won't be retiring, per say, but will definitely be going away for a while. Three years is a long time to have one (somewhat) hastily assembled chapbook as a calling card, and these poems have served me well. I'll try to do the same in stomping, shouting style at the Green Frog.

another reblog!

from friends at babel salvage.

if you've read the piece before, you haven't read it in such good layout.