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!

Manything Goes, at Mother Foucault’s

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

Come help dan raphael celebrate his new book, Manything, with this book launch at Portland's premier reading venue. Manything is 132 pages long, and comes form Unliekly Books in New Orleans. Lawrence Smith, editor of Caliban, wrote: "It is appropriate that Dan Raphael’s Manything has come out in the year of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. Raphael is one of the few poets since Whitman to have such a complete delight in the multiplicity of the world. His integration of the objects of man’s making with the wildness of nature is liberating. The poet’s body parts can function independently and often co-mingle freely with dirty streets, rain, bottles, squirrels, and the sun. Manything is a vision, one that moves us beyond our complacency, making us less…

Free

Wordlights Poetry ft. Michael Haeflinger

Rocking Frog Cafe 2511 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR, United States

Wordlights Saturday poetry evenings presented by NovaPDX, Rocking Frog Cafe and hosted by Igor Brezhnev. On Saturday, October 5th, we'll have a feature from Michael Haeflinger and a long set poetry open mic! OUR FEATURE: Michael Haeflinger Originally from the Midwest, Michael Haeflinger is the author of two chapbooks, Love Poem for the Everyday (2011) and The Days Before (2014), both from Dog On A Chain Press. In 2016, he released Let’s Don’t Be Crazy, a spoken word and music album. He is the recipient of the Rutgers-Camden Award for Community Engagement (2013), The Amocat Award for Community Engagement (2017), and a Tacoma Arts Initiative Program Award (2015). He is the Executive Director for Write253, a literary arts organization in Tacoma, WA. *** Sign-ups start…

Free

Floyd Skloot in Conversation With David Biespiel

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Floyd Skloot’s Far West (LSU) intertwines the past and present, as time alternates between racing and standing still. Crafting poems that confront memory lapses and painful recollections, Skloot traces his moments of purest perception and expression. Skloot will be joined in conversation by David Biespiel, author of The Education of a Young Poet and Republic Café.

Free

Maxine Scates and Shaindel Beers – reading and Q&A

The Tiny Theater PDX 3306 SE 65th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

The Voice of Empathy is back for season 2 at thetinytheaterPDX, 3306 SE 65th Ave, Portland, OR. The series showcases poets whose work investigates the human capacity for compassion and generosity and invites the reader/listener to care deeply for others and the world. This description is for the poets’ reference only and does not presume to impose any constraints on the work selected for presentation. There is room for 37-39 poetry lovers. Please come a few minutes in advance to reserve your seats. Maxine Scates is the author of three collections of poetry, Undone (New Issues), Black Loam (Cherry Grove) and Toluca Street (University of Pittsburgh) . She is coeditor, with David Trinidad, of Holding Our Own: The Selected Poems of Ann Stanford (Copper Canyon).…

Free

Poetry Slam and Open Mic feat. Nelle Jones

Tiny's Coffee - NE MLK Jr 2031 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for another amazing poetry slam and open mic!!! This slam is a qualifying slam for the Women of the World Poetry Slam Finals. There is a 5 dollar suggested donation for this event but no one is turned away. We will have a feature from Nelle Jones! We will be at our venue, Tiny's Coffee Northeast! This means our show is all-ages! Everyone is welcome. We do not censor our mic except for instances of hate-speech. Please also note that we start a little earlier then at previous venues. Accessibility info: Tiny's is on the 6 bus line, which is a frequent service line. It is a quarter mile from the the streetcar line and about a half mile away from the max.…

Free

A. Molotkov, John Sibley Williams, Laura Winter

Multnomah County Library - Northwest Meeting Room 2300 NW Thurman Street, Portland, OR, United States

Free Range Poetry presents A. Molotkov, John Sibley Williams, Laura Winter Monday, October 7, 2019 Northwest Library 2300 NW Thurman Street Portland An open mic will precede featured poets. Open mic readers limited to two pages of material. Sign up for open mic at 5:45 pm. Reading 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm. A. Molotkov moved to the US from Russia in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993. His poetry collections are The Catalog of Broken Things (2016), Application of Shadows (Main Street Rag, September 2018) and Synonyms for Silence (Acre Books/Cincinnati Review, 2019). He has been published by The Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, Atlanta Review, Bennington Review, Tampa Review, Pif, Volt, 2 River View and elsewhere. Molotkov is…

Free

Song of Myself

Lewis & Clark College 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, United States

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman’s birthday, actor Johnny Stallings will be performing “Song of Myself.” This poem is considered to be one of the greatest utterances in American Literature. It can change your life. Following the performance Professor Rachel Cole and Oregon’s Poet Laureate Kim Stafford and Johnny will talk about Walt Whitman and engage in what promises to be a lively dialogue with audience members. Location: Albany Quadrangle, Smith Hall

Free

A Poetry Reading by Marjorie Welish

Lewis & Clark - Frank Manor House 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, United States

Marjorie Welish is the author of The Annotated “Here” and Selected Poems; Word Group; Isle of the Signatories; In the Futurity Lounge / Asylum for Indeterminacy; and So What So That – all from Coffee House Press. The papers delivered at a conference on her writing and art held at the University of Pennsylvania were published as a book in Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish (Slought Books). Thanks to Laurie Anderson, Welish’s first solo show of visual art took place at the Whitney Museum Art Resources Center; recently, a joint art exhibition with Olivier Gourvil took place at La Terrasse, in Nanterre, France; and still more recently, her paintings were on view at the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational 2018. A decade ago Granary Books published Oaths? Questions?, a…

Free

Slamlandia October Literary Arts Show ft. Chris Gonzalez

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Join us on OCTOBER 10TH for our second Thursday Poetry Open Mic and Slam! This is a qualifying slam to get into our WOWPS finals later this year. Doors and sign-ups are at 6:30 PM Get there on time to get a spot in the open mic or slam! Show begins at 7:00 PM Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street Portland, OR 97205 This show is all ages. Please see our Accessibility and Safer Space info below. No door admission. We will have a feature from the fantastic Chris Gonzalez! Chris Gonzalez is an educator, journalist, playwright, poet, musician, and creative-collaborator based in Portland, Oregon. Chris has been a featured poet for the past six years, performing alongside International Slam Champions Saul Williams and Shane…

Free

Rob Carney and Scott Poole

Another Read Through 3932 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR, United States

An evening of newsworthy and humorous poems by 2019 Washington State Book Award finalist Rob Carney and former House Poet of NPRs Live Wire!, Scott Poole. Rob’s The Book of Sharks is a finalist for the Washington Book Award. Scott will be selling a special limited edition of an art book of 20 poems and 20 original paintings. Rob Carney is originally from the northwest (Puyallup, Tacoma, Spokane) and now lives in Salt Lake City. He is the author of five books, most recently The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), which is a finalist for this year’s Washington State Book Award for Poetry (winner to be announced Saturday Oct. 12, so think good thoughts, please). His collection 88 Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2015) was…

Free