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.

IF I weren't working tonight. . .

I would totally be at the Double Header hanging out with the readers and writers of Seattlish.
Like, a site that combines my much-increased-over-the-last-three-years city-planning/development nerdery with healthy sense of humor, diy sensibilities, feminism and a healthy love of drinking cheap beer? AND PUNS?

Someone was trying to target market me.
But I am working, so my liver is probably glad about that.

Maintenance Update Eight Million and Three:

Concise and relevant updates with regards to readings and writings curated and designed or otherwise involving myself:
Thursday, December 12th, I read at Honey Moon Mead in Bellingham, Wa, with Marissa Dimick and Douglas Stranger. It was a great reading, warm crowd, nice venue and I enjoyed the other features as well.
Set: Our Favorite Radio Station/Love and breakfast/Rite Aid/Sleeps With the Fishes/Tool Breaks its Promise/New Danger Activities/Cavities/GRIFOLS/All Things Winged and Waiting

Speaking of "A Tool Breaks its Promise" was featured on Wa. State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken's blog recently. Stoked.

Coming up: Rad Santa: A Night of Literary Holiday Catharsis. At Lotties. I think this marks my first crosspollination between my life as a bartender and life as an organizer. Milestones! Gusta will be coming down from Bellingham, Paul Nelson will be haiku-ing, Ela Barton will throwdown. . . plus more.

January 5th I'm opening for Kris Hall as he releases his new manuscript, Manuscript. Full of poems titled Poem.

January 19th I'm reading at a new event at Naked City Brewing called Squid Press: Books and Beats. Two readers, two beatmakers. Rose Mc Aleese is also reading. More info on that when it's not 4:15pm on a Wednesday, with a few brief hours to be a good holiday shopper. . .

The Handover of former ventures

Is fully documented here, in an interview by Tom Mohrman at Wonder and Risk, where he talked at length with myself and Robert Kaye about life, poetry, evil, power, literature, and biscuits.

Dinosaur knows your time is up.

Monday was the last day of Works In Progress at the Richard Hugo House. Monday was the last day of official excuses for two slices and 1-3 cans of discount Hamms at Big Mario's in a contained time frame before heading over to the RHH. It was time to let Robert P Kaye make like Jesus, and take the wheel. Kris and Bryan and Arlo and a bunch of folks who'd not been in a while mobbed down and I had the trusty Dinosaur Protector to watch hungrily as the night went on. Afterward we all (including Rachel's younger bro and his gf) went to the Cha Cha, Kris got enthused about Lords of the New Church and I got enthused about Mudhoney, respectively, as they drowned out conversation.

Dinosaur watches Steve Shue read from his laptop.

Previously, Sunday night, I hopped a bus to Capitol Hill (ALWAYS WITH THE CAPITOL HILL) and shared a laptop (and some Roses Bourbon) with Chelsea K, who hosts The Casserole, an online reading series (which I explained just one post ago.) I read to the forced silence of Ethan and Rachel E, while Emily Wittenhagen beamed in from Roslyn. I read some new poems, some reworked old poems and a handful of less-frequently read poems from FJGTPL. After she reads, we talk about Aliens, and Owls, and some vague things about forms of writing. Watch it below.



Tonight I am going to work, in about an hour and a half, after a day of largely editing/advising on other people's poetry. This is work I usually get paid for, but sometimes doing it completely for free feels more liberating. . .? That was a dumb sentence I just typed, but I'm leaving it there, because I meant it.

I'll leave you with the following: a list of bars poets can, or should, drink at, in case you'd not seen that before, and this post from Leigh Bell, who writes on artistic self-care in way that neither makes me want to puke, nor makes me suspect she's selling something. She's able to overcome the initial eye-roll I have at "The Artist's Way," to address issues that tend to be either pushed aside or can be overcome if you come to this new writer's retreat and conference and send away for a series of tapes. . . .
It's a relatively quick read for a fairly in-depth thought process, which is something she's pretty good at, as you'll see if you take on her prior posts.

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/

3 versions of nerdery

1) The last few months have been a lot of gigs I've had my hand in making happen, behind the scenes, stuff like that. From the fairly large-scale greenwood litcrawl to the more frequent, but much cozier claustrophobia series, there's been a lot of collaborative planning. as such-- and because I'm currently wrangling the last bits of knowledge from filthy jerry and all things before trying to put myself out there much-- I've almost felt I'd fallen out off practice at just showing up, throwing down and leaving.
Fortunately, August has had a couple readings I've felt pretty solid about. Yes, this is the part where I post setlists and "reflect." If hearing what pieces I read, where and with whom, isn't your bag, there's a part 2 and 3 to this post that you can skip to.
August 3rd, I co-featured with Dave Wheeler and Kate Farrell in the aforementioned Kate's backyard in the Central District. We read in a round, around a fire until it got dark. The general "it" and the fire.
My set:  Unacceptable but Inevitable*/Isolation Therapy/All Things Return to the Dusty Liquor Shelf
Ambition is Critical/Little Fear of Drowning/Missing Every Day
Civic Duty/Several Snapshots*/Genus, Species and Flavour
Rugby '08
This was the first time I'd ever read while seated and it felt natural and right. I think that speaks to the success of the casual/artsy vibe, a vibe that too often falters under its own expectations.

A couple nights ago I opened for Scumeating at The Josephine, a DIY spot in Ballard, next to a bad irish bar and down the street from the Tin Hat, which it is good I don't leave nearby, because I would be there with unhealthy frequency. I did two sets, on either side of Scumeating's performance, ended on my knees, shouting a half-adlibbed ending to Filthy Jerry Gets Paid. If there were video, it probably wouldn't be as awesome as I wished.
Set: Filthy Jerry Sleeps with the Fishes/2012/Tall Drink of Water/Genus, Species and Flavour
Filthy Jerry Gets Paid
Sometimes I wonder why I do readings at venues that are at best, ambivalent toward spoketryword, but some good friends came out and I also am getting back into finding that sort of ambivalence energizing and facepunchy, instead of shoulder-slumpy.

2) The new Aesop Rock album:


It's good. Feels more isolated than his last record, as he's the only rapper and while there are hooks, there are fewer Singles than the last record had (which was still like, three? four, if you're generous?)

3)
All the jokes I want to make, leaving
a new Comic Book movie
with my Dad
are a bit to arch for him,
a bit too newb
for a true believer.

The in-car cd player
stays silent.

The cranes over downtown spark in sunset.
There is no media I can use to improve my standing.

another reblog!

from friends at babel salvage.

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

Words I said to other people:

Do you miss the sound of my voice? Listen to it at Steve Barker's Ordinary Madness Podcast.  We talk about Mudhoney, hip hop, small spaces, Linda's. . . lots of stuff and also some poetry. 

If reading is more your thing, then read this interview by Bryan Edenfield at Babel/Salvage. 

If neither of these things interest you, know that I read at the breadline and it went pretty good.
Setlist was the following: 2012
Neo Takes the Blue Pill
Paintings of Famous Satanists
(filthy jerry and)the Terrifying Truth About Love and Breakfasts
A View From the Hill
A Little Fear of Drowning 
All Things Return to the Charity Pledge Drive

The titles, they just keep getting longer.

growth/entropy/roath/centipede/statshots.

claustrophobia went well saturday. watch the videos here. Tomorrow I read at Northwest Playwrights Alliance's Literary Salon. Right now I am at NSCC, printing out some poem copies which I will doubtlessly just fucking wow audiences with. Friday I'm doing the same sort of thing, but at a giant Christmas Light Event where I used to work. Then the next day I am going to read at Elyse Brownell's (you can find her poetic works online or in links above) going away party.



I just deleted a whole bit I was going to post that was just going to read too much like, well, someone's personal blog. There is drinking for such things.

Thanks!*

For: the northwest, and how even when it feels like you're going to die from sprawl (hello, smokey point) the light bursts and you're out in the Middle of Nowhere, in the best way possible. And that my folks live out here, instead of at some enclave on the edge of Kirkland, so they can be close to a megachurch.
that I've got a new place to live. that i've got good enough friends that the last months have been punctuated by stress headaches, rather than been one constant panic attack or a filthy sleep closet in the ID.
not drugs.
the fam.
creative pursuits and the support they've (already) been shown by Seattle's poetry community.

speaking of Creative Efforts. The now-internet-elusive Wood is marketing the following: OK, so this is me self-promoting. The plan is to get my irresponsible, stupid, violent, sexy and ultimately marketable novel finished, and to get funded to do it, so I'm crowdsourcing, with the aim of getting it sorted this week. You can read more about it here.
Pay it forward, people. While I'm sure he's embarked on more "literary" efforts (i've read some, they're good), Wood also chronically underrates his own work, so it's great to see him getting ambitious.

*I know that being Grateful should be a constant concern, and that the History of Thanksgiving is Wrought and Fraught, but that doesn't mean we can't all use a good reminder now and then. Most folks reading blogs, even those in dire straits, have it better than huge chunks of the world. I believe the reaction to that shouldn't be guilt, but gratitude.

Revolutions are real things,

but are poems about "revolution" about the real thing?

this afternoon, at the North Seattle Community College Espresso Lounge, myself, Lindsey Walker and John Newman read as part of the school's Year of Learning program; the theme for the year is, yup, "revolution."
So vague, but so specific; many of the students at North are international students, some are here directly due to displacement brought on by real, violent, terrifying revolutions. So, given my limited scope of experience with these things, I wasn't sure what to read; I support proactive and sometimes risky measures for change (my next post will probably be about Occupy______) but I am not an anarcho-socialist, by any strict measure, and my own experiences with violence involve seeing a few barfights and hitting someone over the head with a broom when I was 14. That said, the definition of "revolution" was intentionally left squishy-- Lindsey read about science, medicine, the pharoahs. John read about the Civil War, 1963 (in a piece about the '60s that didn't make me want to puke) and finding anonymous notes in library books. I read about Wales. More specifically: Culture Vs. Cause (or Enough with the Marley Already if Folks are Actually Dying)/ Neo Takes the Blue Pill/ Dongtan-Hwaesong-Suwon-Seoul/ Swansea-Cardiff Blues (bellingham edition)/ Ambition is Critcial (Swansea Edition)/ Quake Theories

First piece is perhaps an extraneously mean-spirited jab at collegiate hippie types (and bob fucking marley posters) which I wrote about six years ago, just after graduating the first time. The last poem is new, about earthquakes and what happens to Seattle. Things were well set-up and there were actually a lot of people there. (noon on a thursday? who knew.)Cousin Justin hit up the reading after a too-brief hangout beforehand, where we test-drove Ford Focuses and hey! Free coffee.

Tuesday night I had my first taste of facilitating at SPLAB Living Room a task I felt underprepared for. It's a hard working and dedicated group of writers that shows up, founded by Paul Nelson and running for over 10 years. (this is it's second in Columbia City, prior it was in Auburn.) Unforseen and unfortunate circumstances-- I don't feel like blogging grief right now-- prevented much prepwork, but things went well anyway. See above about the dedicated and talented writers.

Anyway. Lots of family is out, I'm working a lot and soon will start putting together a new book/chapbook/manuscript. Longwinded, I know.

Just imagine if YOU kept getting colder while the rest of them around you burned.

Housefire publishing is a site based out of Portland. I met the editor at the backend of a party in the Central District. It was one of those "art parties" or "lit parties" wherein the general consumption of Genesee was punctuated by readings in a crowded basement. The bit of the reading I caught was good and in the afterwards so was the banter. Granted, I was a good five-ten beers behind most people, having come from work, but, you know. The editor (Riley) told me to get in touch, in a writerly way.

This is one of the things to come from that conversation. A short fiction. Go to it, read it, read the other things on the site.

Silence, Communication, Rosemary and Thyme

Thursday night I participated in Silence and Communication (check out the link two posts down, I'm feeling lazy.)
You can read The Stranger's review, which describes things pretty well from an audience point of view. It went well, and while I believe that Greg Bem, Matthew Thompson and Jason Conger (who probably also have links I could link to, but, lazy) put together a fantastic reading lineup, the concept was well-executed enough it almost didn't matter who the readers were. It was a whole piece. A concept. Plenty of folks showed up to support their friends, but there wasn't a feeling of a "headliner" or what-have-you. That said, definitely enjoyed a lot of the specific pieces on their own as well.
As for my part, I read a piece called "context(subtext)" that existed prior to getting the invitation, but hasn't made it out much, so I hacked it up. The event consisted of straight up poetry, prose pieces, sound poems, noise music, performance art, etc etc etc. Alllll sorts.


Nico Vassilakis tore up the above paper into a microphone for his piece.


Sole Repair, photoed from the balcony. Once the event got going I didn't have much time or energy to take more pics. Suffice to say there were a lot more people there.

I was pretty damn out of it the whole day/night. This added an additional level of surrealism to the experience for me. Note how it looks like my face is falling off.

I do not remember whose head this is the back of.


We sat in chairs around the room. I was in chair number 9, next to Jarrett, who sometimes wears a hat similar to those which I used to own.

This time next week, I will be in Korea.

South.

This isn't something I've really kept blogupdated about, because taking a trip is exciting, preparing for a trip is tedious. Preparing for a trip when said preparations require frequent trips out of town*, taking time off an already too-lite workload and asking people for money so you can go on said trip, well, that is tedious, exhausting, frustrating and one must make the choice for it to not be embarrassing**.

That said, as I've observed elsewhere, consistently impressed with the support and generosity of friends and family. So much to do in the next few days.

That said, amuse/distract yourself with this bit of lite-political musing. There's a few points he draws a bit broad, but hey.

*Stanwood, which is no Busan, but still
**I've largely successfully made that choice, and no one's made me feel like I should be be embarrassed. I think "embarrassed" is just a place I find myself easily.

Falling down is not magic

Thursday's Hoarse reading--complete with welsh magicians, cake, lots of awesome readers and deepstomach laughter-- and last night's Drink for the Kids (benefitting Vera) were good but sitting completely alone in my house without music on, tacos impending, this is good. Soon I will watch Peep Show and sleep.

But! It should be noted that I'm not just imagining how fun the Hoarse! readings are, or how (coughcoughterriblewordalert) "vibrant" and "diverse" (ughgross) Seattle's "literary community" (AAAAAAAAAAGGGGH!) is, as evidenced by Emily Wittenhagen's awesomely enthused manifesto of the this is why we do this variety.

I like the part about Jurassic Park.

Feeeeels like the first time.

I once wrote about that song (but not ABOUT THAT SONG, you know, deep) but have since abandoned the poem. Still like the song.

Tonight, in Belltown, at a theater with a lot of red curtains I'll be reading at the HOARSE! release party for issue #3. Houdini.

To Fix the Gash In Your Head

Perpetual States

To be forever eating, to be forever drinking, never sated. What they said it would be like in hell (a variety of sources, don't ask me to be specific,) the vice of choice shoveling, battering, inundating. To be forever packing snowballs with no one to throw them at. To be forever pissing, never relieved (bad example: in the act itself there is relief)what they said hell would be like when they believed in it. Sometimes the bus is forever turning a corner and Jerry is always just missing his connector. At times like this the sky remains exactly the same as it was the moment before and pieces of bread fall from the old lady's hand to the pigeons (who eat the crumbs, this old lady is not in hell.) At times like this, and sometimes at other times, Jerry thinks of Joe Wenderoth, sitting in Wendy's, completely dazed on cough medicine and perpetually wanting to fuck the red, soft, wet
mouth of the girl at the register. How sore would you get, from shifting in your seat, due to that wanting, and what about those days when people think you terrible for disenjoying their picnic and being unthankful for your peeling sunburn? There are a few of us, and we are forever realizing we aren't alone.


I wrote these both in under 25 minutes at work. Or you could read James Burns' Largely Correct rant/take on Indie Rock in all it's linguistic meaninglessness. I quibble with some definitions, but I think the larger thrust of what he says is well stated and something I'd have written here but am lazy and hate writing about music a lot of the time.

Pinching, Pulling

Crabs running sideways in sunglasses make me hop quicker than a dance with "hop" in the title ever could. My girlfriend is hungover from wine and whisky after wandering the streets of Columbia City lost but nonplussed. Eventually the bar (there's always one of those) overcharged me for drinks and the man who makes a living playing guitar on cruise ships was talking to the off-duty bartender. It was like a dance. Or hop. The woman he will see later is in California, so it will be much later. I think the off-duty bartender's swooping dark hair has him convinced. Successfully, I guide my wandering girlfriend to her whisky-ginger, which is now mainly melted ice (I hadn't known about the earlier wine) and in low light I still drink IPAs like they were ales with half the strength (maybe why I always have a headache) and the on-duty bartender is reluctant to do anything at all. Half the walk home I had my fingers through blonde hair, staggery past fields of disused tires. This morning I was glad I can give directions and cook eggs, because if there'd been a pack of wild dogs, I doubt I'd have been able to fight them off.

Body Party . . .

can now be found online at the current issue of beat the dust.
Thanks to David Oprava for the nomination.

Other news, Saturday was the Your Hands Your Mouth release party for issues 8 and 9. We had ten people reading in the living room. TEN. And hey, it went well. Readers (from last to first): Robert Lashley, Greg Bem, Jessica Lohafer, Jay Steingold, Chris Gusta (break!) Cate McGehee, Ryan Johnson, Caren Scott, Rainey Warren and Jake Tucker.


Phew.

Breezy dismissal of the last 9 months.

grinding down/ramping up.