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!

Dan Raphael

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We are pleased to welcome Portland poet Dan Raphael to read from his new books of poems, Manything, published by Unlikely Books. Raphael is a master of verse and performance, and this post-Beat tome contains sixty-five of his wild, vivid trips-in-verse. Raphael was born in Pittsburgh and attended Cornell University, Bowling Green State University, and Western Washington University. Since the 1970s, he has lived in the Northwest, working and sharing the fruits of his labor as a poet, literary activist, performer, editor, and reading host. He retired from the Oregon DMV after thirty-three years and lives in Portland with his wife Melba and more than 400 plant varieties. Most Wednesdays he writes and records a “current events poem” for the KBOO evening news. Raphael has…

Free

Submission Deadline: Buckman Journal: The Marie Equi Prize For Poetry

Buckman Publishing PO Box 14247, Portland, OR, United States

Buckman Journal is proud to announce The Marie Equi Prize For Poetry. One poet will receive $200.00 and appear in Buckman Journal 004. There is no entry fee. Firebrand Marie Equi (1872-1952) was a Portland physician, suffragette, birth control advocate, labor activist, and perhaps the first publicly known lesbian on the west coast. The prize is open to Oregon and SW Washington residents only. Please send 4 to 6 poems, or 4 to 6 pages of unpublished poetry (no more than 6 pages). Do not print your name or any self-identifying annotation on your submission. Please include a cover letter with a contact email address AND phone number. Only winning or honorably mentioned submissions will be notified. Simultaneous submissions are fine. Email submissions are NOT…

Free

Poetry Reading: Linda Bierds & David Biespiel

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes these two wonderful Northwest poets. The Hardy Tree is Washington poet Linda Bierds's latest collection. Focusing on figures such as Thomas Hardy, Alan Turing, Virginia Woolf, and the World War One poets, The Hardy Tree examines power, oppression and individual rights in ways that reverberate through our lives today. Uniting these themes is the issue of communication--the various methods and codes we use to reach one another. The book is arranged in four sections. The first visits Vladimir Nabokov as a child with alphabet blocks, Alan Turing at eleven writing home from boarding school with a "pen of his own making," Virginia Woolf as a teenager practicing her penmanship, and Wilfred Owen trying to draw a musical note from a blade of…

Free

Diana Lo Mei Hing in Conversation with Horatio Law

Portland Chinatown Museum 127 NW Third Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Diana Lo Mei Hing was born in Hong Kong and spent her childhood in Guangzhou during the volatile run up to the Cultural Revolution. Her father fled with his family to Milan, Italy where Diana was raised. A well known abstract watercolor and mixed media painter, photographer, and poet in Italy, where she continues to exhibit, Diana moved to Portland with her American husband, also a fine arts photographer, in 2015. This is her first solo exhibition in the Northwest. Front Gallery Followed by a no-host lunch at the Red Robe Tea House Tickets: $12/General; $10/Members

$10 – $12

The Work Poetry Workshop: Saturday Edition

Niche Wine Bar 1013 Main St, Vancouver, WA, United States

“Well, while I’m here I’ll do the work — and what’s the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.” ― Allen Ginsberg, “Memory Gardens” (Fall of America, City Lights) Join us on Saturday, January 18 for The Work, a monthly poetry writing workshop at Niche Wine Bar led by Christopher Luna. Poetry encourages empathy and compassion, and sparks the shifts in consciousness which can lead to healing, personal growth, and an interest in fighting for progressive social change. I look forward to sharing my passion for poetry with you. The Work is a drop-in poetry writing workshop for beginners as well as more experienced writers. We will read and discuss poetry, and write several new poems together from 11:30-2:00. Doors open…

Free – $20

Wordlights Poetry ft. Stephanie Strange

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, January 18th, we'll have a feature from Stephanie Strange and a long set poetry open mic! OUR FEATURE: Stephanie Strange Have you met Stephanie Strange? She IS an odd one. With one foot firmly planted in this world, and the other playing footsie beyond the veil, The Lady Strange has something to say. Some of these stories are her own, from a life of passion and missteps; and some of these stories were given to her from the animals, ghosts, and spirits who speak to her, to pass along to mankind, before it’s too late. Lessons and stories all, for a world full of lonely people who are…

Free

Poetry Slam and Open Mic feat. Greg Bee

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 will be the first slam in our qualifying season foo the International Poetry Slam! There is a 5 dollar suggested donation for this event but no one is turned away. We will have a feature from Greg Bee! More about Greg Bee: Greg Bee is a traveling poet, storyteller, and performer. His work deals with topics like mental health and addiction recovery, gender and sexuality, as well as social and political issues. His first book, Saying Goodbye to Toxic Boys is a codependent love story. 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.…

Free – $5

Oh Word!?

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

Drop in any 1st or 3rd Sunday for a collaborative workshop/workspace for collage & found poetry creation. Each week will have a centering exercise & in the spring participants have the option of contributing to a zine & group reading! this workshop is for Black, Indigenous POC who identify as Queer/Trans/Non-binary! facilitated by dovesong labs

Free

Poetry Reading: Emmett Wheatfall & John Sibley Williams

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland poets Emmett Wheatfall & John Sibley Williams. Emmett Wheatfall presents his latest poetry collection, Our Scarlet Blue Wounds. Wheatfall shows us how the roots of love grow deep in the soil of sacrifice. He illustrates the intensely complex relationship between idealism and realism. His poems hurt in just the right way. And it's no small feat opening one's own racial and cultural wounds for the world to see. It takes courage. It takes trust that a country will recognize itself, and its complicity, in those wounds. And Wheatfall trusts us to witness along with him. He proves himself ready and willing, even eager, to, as the titular poem in this collection demands, "build a new world" together. John Sibley Williams's latest…

Free