Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Michael Shay & M.F. McAuliffe

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Featuring Michael Shay and M. F. McAuliffe.

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

7 pm
Thursday, December 9

Art at the Cave
108 E Evergreen Blvd
Vancouver, WA 98660
https://artatthecave.com/

$5 Suggested donation

NOTE: Art at the Cave co-founder Kathi Rick has graciously offered to help us to continue to include our new friends from around the country in the open mic. Email katecrackernuts@comcast.net by no later than midnight on December 8 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are “Reading” or “Just Listening.” You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting.

Zoom open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less.

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

Masks must be worn at all times to participate in this event. Open Mic readers may remove their masks while reading. The microphone will be sanitized after each reader.

Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We are practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing. We kindly request that you wear a mask and practice social distancing while visiting the gallery. If needed, we will limit the number of people in the gallery. Masks and hand sanitizer are available upon entry.

Art At The CAVE was established in 2017. Located at 108 E. Evergreen in downtown Vancouver, the CAVE is free and open to the public Tues-Sat, 10am-4pm, and on First Fridays when it remains open until 8:00pm. The gallery is also available to host events. Visit the website at artatthecave.com or contact gallery@artatthecave.com for more information.

Please support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020: https://nichewinebar.com/

Michael Shay was born in Ludwigschafen am Rhein, Germany, and grew up in Chicago. At the University of Iowa he studied with Louise Glück, attended the Iowa Graduate Summer Session Poetry Workshop, and holds a Master of Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary and Experimental Art. He is one of the editors of the Broken Word anthologies drawn from the Broken Word reading at the Alberta Street Pub in northeast Portland. His poetry has appeared in The South Carolina Review, Nimrod, Gobshite Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Words I Own.

“Michael Shay’s The Words I Own is captivating. The poems are by turns playful and heartbreaking.” – Marvin Bell

“Michael Shay’s poetry whispers in the reader’s ear that before we are “ready to drink with death/ He drinks with [us].” He understands the importance of rising each time we fall, the fusion of love and living.” – Christopher Luna, author of Message From A Vessel In A Dream and co-author, with Angelo Luna, of Exchanging Wisdom

M. F. McAuliffe is an Australian writer and editor. Her long poem “Orpheus” was staged by La Mama as “Orpheus, an Australian Tragedy” at the Courthouse Theatre, Carlton, in May 2000. Her poem “Crucifix I” appeared in the Yoko Ono installation “Arising” in the Reykjavik Art Museum, Nov. 2016-Feb. 2017. She is co-founder and co-editor of the Portland, Oregon-based multi-lingual magazine Gobshite Quarterly and of Reprobate/ GobQ Books. She is the author of The Crucifixes and Other Friday Poems and 25 Poems On The Death Of Ursula K. Le Guin.

“Always succinct, often laconic, wonderfully humorous, and at times delightfully blasphemous, poet and translator M. F. McAuliffe hasn’t forgotten that the first order of business is to entertain. Whether writing her own poems or translating the words and worlds of others, McAuliffe makes the ancient feel contemporary, the contemporary timeless. If you’re ready for something compellingly different, open this book.”
– Andrea Hollander, author of Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982 – 2012, Woman in Painting, and Blue Mistaken For Sky

“The poems are heart-rending and at the same time full of love.” – Luisa Valenzuela, Carlos Fuentes Prize winner, 2019, and author of Deathcats, The Lizard’s Tail, Bedside Manners, and God’s Joke