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Livestream: Joann Boswell, Christopher Luna & Rebecca Smolen
August 20, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FreeAnnie Bloom’s welcomes local poets Joann Boswell, Christopher Luna and Rebecca Smolen for a livestream reading from their latest collections.
Livestream registration link: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/joann-boswell
Local writer Joann Boswell presents her new book, Cosmic Pockets. What if Mary wasn’t really a virgin? Could Jesus be an alien from another planet? How do we know we’re not all living inside of God? Poet and photographer Joann Renee Boswell invites us to travel with her into an encounter with the inconvenient complexities of earth-life and outer space, politics and religion, Bigfoot, feminism, Santa Claus, and spirituality––all tucked inside the Cosmic Pockets of life. Simultaneously whimsical and serious, Cosmic Pockets traces Joann’s personal journey out of evangelical Christianity and into an evolving understanding of faith––what if the universe is out to help us? Into motherhood––do my children exist when I’m not there? And into love––do I have a superpower? Unflinchingly honest and delightfully conflicted, the dense narrative of Cosmic Pockets will complicate your understanding of what the world is and gift you with narrow glimpses of what might be.
Portland poet Christopher Luna’s latest collection is Message from the Vessel in a Dream. “How many Christopher Lunas are there? The bard, the community dynamo, the scholar, the compassionate one, the jazz quartet, the father & lover, the world of a man: all and more are speaking in this book. So many perspectives to experience here, so much to learn about literature, attitude, action and beauty. The maestro of Ghost Town has created a bustling, radiant and necessary environment.” – Dan Raphael
Local poet Rebecca Smolen will be reading from her chapbook, Womanhood & Other Scars, as well as pieces from her forthcoming collection, Excoriation, due from Poetry Box on October 15. The poems in Womanhood & Other Scars explores what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. The scars of each of our experiences are there to remind us how far we’ve come, and give us the strength to keep rising.