"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:

The next Claustrophobia

. . . happens shortly after christmas. check Bem's filmmaking prowess and my poetic-improvisational chops as well in the promo video below.

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.

giglist

appearing, in one form or another, at the following public-ish venues:

March 17th Greb Bem's poetrybirthdayextravaganza (columbia city, seattle)
March 28th feature at Broken Mic @ the Baby Bar/Neato Burrito (Spokane, Wa)
May 16th The Breadline @ Vermillion Art Bar. W/Roy Seitz, Megan Kelso (Seattle)
December 5th First Wednesday @ The Grange (Duvall, Wa)

this possibly sets a record for farthest-out booking. hey internet! more gigs. alll about gigggs, gigs and giiiiigs.

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.

In like squished peeps.

The new project from GI and Not Drugs.

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.

Fix it with mixing.

Last night Not Drugs and I went to the Breadline at Vermillion. There were readings from Evan Peterson and Laura Wachs, a reading/music/dance performance from Pistol Shrimp and zany violinnings from Led to Sea. One of the things that consistently impresses me about Breadline is the format; much like Weird and Awesome with Emmett Montgomery, you do not have to enjoy every performer to leave the night feeling satisfied and entertained.

That. Is. Huge. Granted, if every performance sucks/isn't your bag, you aren't likely to have a great time, but there is more room for gradations of interest and quality when you've got mixed-genres. I liked Evan and Laura (exception of one or two pieces, but that's gonna happen) but only fully enjoyed Pistol Shrimp when they were incorporating the Butoh dancer into their routine. That was only about a third of the time, and they took the largest chunk of the evening. The violinist played with a lot of loop pedals and some effects, but the songs were good enough to avoid feeling like a novelty act (*coughcoughcough* CR Avery *Coughcoughcough*) If it'd been a full evening of only one of these performance types, I'd have been worn out by the end, possibly grumpy even at the people whose work I enjoyed. As it was, I felt energized, interested and inspired.

In other news, Google Plus. Eh? Eh?