LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop w Ruben Quesada

Online N/A, Portland

It Came from Outer Space: This class will focus on writing new poetry. In this workshop we will challenge our notions of ekphrasis by focusing our attention on sci-fi films to generate our poems. While the Greek term ekphrasis translates simply as ‘a vivid description’ of a thing, the long-established tradition of ekphrastic poetry opens the door to a wide range of creative approaches for poets to engage with a work of art in another medium. Ekphrastic poems utilize a myriad of forms and strategies, and they respond to, incorporate, investigate, embellish, interpret and/or reflect upon a vital work of art—usually either a painting, photograph, or sculpture. You will be expected to view one or more of the films from the list below as the source of artwork.…

$215 – $242

2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Joy Harjo

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland

Joy Harjo is a renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019. Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry—most recently An American Sunrise—several plays and children’s books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave. She has received numerous prominent awards, including the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and 2015 Wallace Stevens Award. The Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, says: “Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are.” Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo earned her MFA at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop and has taught Eng­lish, Cre­ative Writ­ing, and Amer­i­can Indi­an Stud­ies at numerous universities, while per­form­ing music and poet­ry…

$90 – $355