Annie Bloom’s welcome local poets Riley Danvers, Xylophone Mykland, and Ahuva S. Zaslavsky for readings from their new collections, published by Portland’s own First Matter Press. They will be joined by fellow local poet Nastashia Minto, who will be reading a selection of new poems.
This in-store reading is first come, first served. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading.
About Even the Air, Too Heavy:
When the body becomes a monument of loss, the self must navigate a vast internal space, not on the world’s timeline, but in its own circadian cadences. Riley Danvers’s collection Even the Air, Too Heavy wayfinds through the emptiness of miscarriage with words and experimental forms that examine the vacated, the absent, the lost. What is not on the page is as painful as the recounting. The autonomous physiology of the body and the sterile technical procedures we apply to it magnify the spirit’s estrangement with its mortal housing. In a world of how-to’s and what-next’s, Danvers’s collection lives in the timelessness of tides and patterns, where the self drifts long as it takes for a path of healing to emerge.
Riley Danvers is a bisexual poet living in Portland, Oregon with her partner, their cat, Lester, and corgi, Kiki. She graduated in 2016 with her A.S. in English and in 2018 with her B.A. in English Literature and Writing. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in more than twenty-five online and printed literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been published in Z Publishing House, Silkworm, Clackamas Literary Review, Other Worldly Women Press, Chasing Shadows, and Fox Paw Literary Blog. Riley graduated with her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Willamette University in 2021, and is currently pursuing a M.A. in Literature from Mercy College.
About Someone I Can Hold Gently:
Infusing the everyday with unflinching honesty, Xylophone Mykland’s debut collection, Someone I Can Hold Gently, dispenses with convention at every turn but never sacrifices accessibility. With style rooted in spoken-word, Mykland’s revelatory poems grow the conversation around neurodiversity, abuse, neglect, and growth. Discover alongside the speaker as they wade through the ripples of childhood pain into young adult experience, as they tinker with the ever-elusive puzzle of self-love within the mirrors of foundational relationships.
Xylophone Mykland (they/them) is a nonbinary lesbian poet and self-proclaimed special occasion, currently based in Portland, OR. When they’re not writing poetry, you can find them Googling “androgynous outfits,” walking dogs, applying for public assistance, and thinking about poetry.
About Between These Borders Wanders a Golem:
In attempts to reclaim a forgotten past, glimpses into the dark might start with a dream, an article or a memory. Between These Borders Wanders a Golem is a hybrid book of poems, flash, and short stories that present psychic investigation into repeating ideas that roam a body. The in-between landscape that emerges urges meaning-makers to question whether we ever really remember the past, simply create it anew each time we reach into our dark memories, or both. Claiming none of it, all of it and more, Zaslavsky names that it is “in this opening / everything can go wrong or be filled with joy.”
Ahuva S. Zaslavsky lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She was born and raised in Tel Aviv and graduated from The University of the Negev, Israel with a BA in behavioral sciences. ahuva completed her MFA in Visual Studies at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. In her work, ahuva looks into the relationship of space and place to memory and trauma. Through writing, painting, printing, sculpting and other mediums, her investigations permeate the social and domestic, the cultural and psychological. Her work has been shown locally and nationally. ahuva has completed the Art/Lab fellowship in 2022 and was named to GLEAN Portland’s 2022 artist residency. These Borders Wanders a Golem is her first book.
Nastashia Minto is the author of Naked: The Rhythm and Groove of It. The Depth and Length to It. An African American woman born in South Georgia and raised there by her grandparents, she grew up in poverty and around drugs, alcohol, and family violence. Her life experiences led her to obtain an associate’s degree in occupational therapy and a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Nastashia has been writing since she was nine years old, and has found that her writing offers her a way to help others. Her work has appeared in Gobshite Quarterly, Portland Metrozine, Nailed Magazine, SUSAN The Journal, and the Unchaste Anthology.
Related
