Tuesday, November 24th at 7:30 or so: David Wolach, Jen Coleman, Ashley D'Avignon Goodwin and Kenny Anderson

Who: poets David Wolach and Jen Coleman, visual artist Ashley d'Avignon Goodwin and musician Kenny Anderson
When: Tuesday, November 24th at 7:30
Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Upper Floors
Etc.: Bring food or drink to share, or maybe throw some money in for beer. Bring extra cash you've got laying around in case anyone's hawking anything. Bring something to hawk. Or just show up with your lovely self.

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David Wolach is professor of text arts, poetics, and new media at The Evergreen State College, and visiting professor in Bard College’s Workshop In Language & Thinking. He is the author of several books, most recently Occultations (Black Radish Books, forth. 2010), Prefab Eulogies Vol. 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox, forth. 2010), Hospitalogy (Scantily Clad Press, forth. 2009-10), Acts of Art/Works of Violence (SSLA/Univ. of Sydney), and book alter(ed) (Ungovernable Press, 2009). His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, most recently 5_Trope, No Tell Motel, XPoetics, Dusie, Little Red Leaves, and The BlueFifth Review. Recipient of grants from the Washington Arts Council and the Olympia Fund for Diversity in the Arts, Wolach’s work is often site specific and uses multiple media. His work has been performed at venues such as The Buffalo Poetics Series, The Stain of Poetry Series, The American Cybernetics Conference, and EconVergence. Wolach is also a member of Nonsite Collective, and founding editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, a quarterly journal and chapbook series dedicated to radical text arts, poetics, and politics, which curates the yearly series PRESS Series & Conference in collaboration with The Evergreen State College. For reading dates, essay, calls or Wheelhouse submissions, & other happenings, visit David's blog.

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Jen Coleman is a Minnesota poet by way of DC, New York and now Portland. Former co-editor of the literary magazine Pom2 and former co-curator of the DC based “In Your Ear” reading series. Jen also has a chapbook, Propinquity, and her work has appeared in The Tangent, Ixnay, Chain and other splendid journals.



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Ashley d'Avignon Goodwin:


The goal I have in mind for this series is to encourage people to call into question their own domestic photo displays. Why this picture? Why this moment? The tendency to preserve "big" events; weddings, graduations, reunions - necessarily implies that the day to day lacks the importance of times such as these. Or at least, those days aren't worth sharing, those days don't contribute to the greater you. What's more is that the images often lie anyway - just because you had 27 of your closest relatives wearing the same colored sweater all smiling for 10 seconds doesn't mean they aren't in a perpetual pissing contest.

You can get a pretty good look at the image someone wants to project by looking at the photos they present. "My family is always this happy. I always look this pretty. Why yes I do play the guitar. My nonchalance alerts you that I am an artist and have no need to smile for you, that would be trite."

The images on display here are all of women who just got arrested for either shoplifting or some other mall misconduct. I believe this to be one of the many missing pieces in the usual photographic illustration of ones life. It's truthful, frightening and embarrassing. And isn't life just one frightening, embarrassing event after another? Is it just me? --But even still, some of them smile as to say "fuck you, I'll be back next week," some of them look like they're going to deck you as soon as you take the cuffs offs - the presentation of oneself is not void here. Is the "fuck you pig" photo any more or less real than the "I'm going to love this woman for the rest of my life" photo? Was seeking the real even my goal? Did I just fail at writing an artist's statement?





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Kenny Anderson doesn't understand things. He tries to play the guitar his very best. It takes him over twenty years to write a song. You wouldn't know it to hear one, but it's true. He is very happy. There is a rumor floating around that he doesn't vote. Maybe that's why he never complains.

Tuesday, October 27th at 7:30 pm: Carson Cistulli, James Honzik, and Future Death Toll

Sooner than you might expect!: Poets Carson Cistulli and James Honzik and special musical guest Future Death Toll all making noise for you for free!

Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Upper Floors
When: Tuesday, October 27 at 7:30 pm

No donation turned away!


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James Honzik:

I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, then studied poetry under John Yau, Bernadette Meyer, and David Trinidad at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, the heart of poetry in NYC, and with Charles Bernstein at the New School.

Out on the West coast I fell into a job as a commercial photographer. In a year I took over 50,000 photos of buildings in cities all over the Pacific Northwest, in rain, in fog, in sun, in shadow, in mist, in summer, and winter.

Now, somehow, my poetry and photography has combined. Lichen, water, stone, corrosion, decay, and the faces of my friends, have become the vocabulary of a visual poetry.

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Carson Cistulli teaches both at Portland Community College and through the Writers in the Schools program sponsored by Literary Arts. His first book, Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, was published by Casagrande Press. His second book, Winning, is forthcoming from the same press. He lives in Portland.

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Future Death Toll is an artist collective residing in Portland that produces and manipulates live audio and video. Armed with modular synthesizers, projectors, a drumpad and a blaze orange rotary phone, and uniformed in blaze orange ‘Dannaz and safety vestz. Future Death Toll is a throbbing mess noise that eats technology and shits performance art.

Future Death Toll will perform back alley open-heart surgery on its most enthusiastic patients. The process of rearranging, patching, and modifying audio and video induces intestinal oscillations that could easily jump-start Dr. Frankenstein’s creature.

Tuesday, September 29th: Jesse Lichtenstein, Andrew Michael Roberts, w/music by Tyler Gaston

Kidnap: Back with another one, not entirely dissimilar to the other ones! PDX virtuosos yet again! Who'da thunk it??

Who: Poets Jesse Lichtenstein & Andrew Michael Roberts, Musician Tyler Gaston
Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Upper Floors
When: Tuesday, September 29th at 7:30 pm
How much: Free (donations of money, drinks, food, books, & love accepted; no receipts issued)

Also, once again we'll have a table set up with consumer goods for all your capitalist impulses! Bring stuff you made if you want to sell it!

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Jesse Lichtenstein is working on his first book of poems, excerpts of which have appeared in the Paris Review, Gulf Coast, Verse, Denver Quarterly, La Petite Zine, and other journals. He also writes journalism and prosy things, some of which have appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, The Economist, n +1, and the anthology Disquiet Please (Random House, 2008). Most of the time he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches poetry, writes screenplays, and helps run the Loggernaut Reading Series.

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Andrew Michael Roberts is the author of something has to happen next, which was awarded the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize and is a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award. He has written two chapbooks, Dear Wild Abandon, selected for a 2007 PSA National Chapbook Award, and Give Up from Tarpaulin Sky Press (2006). He lives in Portland.

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Musical guest Tyler Gaston is from Oklahoma. He has been putting words to music for almost ten years, pumping out country ballads of the setting sun and the darkening night with tear-inducing efficiency. Relatively new to Portland, Tyler is settling in to the realities of living in a world class drinking town, humming and strumming through the diviest bars around. He plays in the band The Tumblers and once-upon-a-time musical collaboration with Joshua Beckman on Erasmas Darwin. Experience the lore of this back-woods, ax-wielding, chicken frying, country yodeling, cattle branded, southern gentleman for yourself.

Tuesday, August 25th 19:30: Sarah Bartlett, Mark Salame, w/art by Christopher Pearson

Surprise! INFK returns!

A poet, a prosist, a painter, seriously, come on. All local and all lovely, all the time.

When: Tuesday, August 25^th at 7:30 pm

Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Upper Floors

All are welcome, donations ($, books, food, drink) welcome too.

Also, we'll have a little table set up in case you're into buying/selling poems and art and other homemade ephemera.

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Sarah Bartlett lives in Portland. Her chapbook (co-written with Chris Tonelli), A Mule-Shaped Cloud, was published by horse less press in 2008. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Coconut, Sir!, Sixth Finch, Diagram, and elsewhere. Poems co-written with Emily Kendal Frey have appeared or are forthcoming in New Pony: A horse less Anthology, sub-Lit, Portland Review, Caffeine Destiny, Alice Blue, and Bat City.

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Marc Saleme is from Omaha Nebraska, attended the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, but never graduated, began school at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, but quit that too. He is one of the publishers The Benefactor magazine. His work has previously been published in Berlin-based literary journal Bordercrossing-Berlin. He currently resides in Portland.

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Christopher Pearson comes from the Great Plains and is a working artist in Portland. He does a lot of painting and has some school history. This show has a lot to do with process-oriented self-portraits. Layers. The new school of figurative painting and portraiture. This work was shown at the Basement Pub a little over a year ago and they were super cool about it.

Monday (!!!), July 27th at 7:30 in the PM: Joel Bettridge & Joseph Mains

INFK once again bringing you the freshest locally grown poems!

This month on a very special Monday (not Tuesday) come join us in listening to Joel Bettridge and Joseph Mains read their poems aloud. There is also a pretty good chance we will have a special musical guest.

When: Monday, July 27th at 7:30 pm

Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Apt A

All are welcome, donations totally not turned out.

Also, if you're into selling or buying poems, etc., everyone is invited to bring anything they made, and everyone is invited to bring some extra cash.

Joel Bettridge is the author of two books of poetry, That Abrupt Here (The Cultural Society Press, 2007) and Presocratic Blues (forthcoming from Chax Press). He co-edited, with Eric Selinger, Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (National Poetry Foundation) and his critical study, Reading as Belief: Language Writing, Poetics, Faith is forthcoming from Palgrave in Fall 2009. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University.

Courtship in the Age of Youtube

Inevitable, the time clock that hangs around in your sinus cavities, the tension of

inhaling and exhaling and checking your inbox, at

a customary stage, not, steady enough, to take your jeans off

not, at ease enough, to refrain from it,

your words as to the vagueness of an end game.

I’ll send you a clip from a popular sketch-comedy television show, and one of a man

who injures his ankle in a gruesome way;

in between I’ll watch a hot girl do something, Saddam hanged until dead, and

trade you one kind of unfreedom for another,

and act toward your border states as if they were the developing world,

but a team of scientists finds a gigantic ring of invisible material left over from

the ancient collision of galaxy clusters; they announce it as this most

convincing evidence for the mysterious stuff called dark matter; but an

online social network popular with teenagers shares with state attorneys

the identities of members who are known sex offenders.

I’ll send you a clip of the gayest weatherman ever,

I’ll send you a clip of Japanese people, and a drunken kitten.

Let me treat you like a sparsely inhabited or virtually unsettled land—

let’s do what robots do.

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Joseph Mains was born in the Sonoran desert and lives in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Portland. Having taken his MFA in Poetry, he now fries pies for a living. His poems appear in places physical and online.

Cleave

It rains.

The pain is temporary but it fits like the shirt with the hole in the elbow.

Have we all had enough? Yes the mountains are beautiful and

yes we can drive through them without getting out.

I ripped through a breastbone and ribs to get outside

the meaty swaddles and when I woke up I was glad that they were yours.

Tuesday, June 30th 7:30 pm: Lisa Ciccarello & Emily Kendal Frey, w/art by Randell Sims

This month at KIDNAP!: two fantastic Portland poets, one fantastic Portland painter!

Couple new things:

1) Things on sale! New chapbooks, old issues of journals, ephemera, etcetera! The money will go directly to the artist. Also, if you've got a book or a chapbook or a journal that you made and you'd like to sell it, bring it on by!

2) Donations are still totally welcome, but any money over the amount of what we spend on refreshments will be split between the readers. Be lovely, bring a dollar or three, or bring food / beverages to share!

3) Art! We'll have art hung upon the walls.

So...

Who: Lisa Ciccarello & Emily Kendal Frey with poems, Randell Sims with paintings

Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Apt A

When: Tuesday, June 30th at 7:30 pm

Who is welcome: Everyone

And!

Lisa Ciccarello is the author of two chapbooks: At Night (Scantily Clad Press 2009) & At night, the dead: (Blood Pudding Press 2009). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming from Glitterpony, elimae, Otoliths, Anti-, Saltgrass & Sawbuck, among others. She's currently assistant editor at Scantily Clad Press. 

Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland Community College. She is the author of AIRPORT (Blue Hour Press, 2009). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Handsome, Sink Review, Sixth Finch, jubilat, Microfilme and Word For/Word.   

Randell Sims it was OK but it is not OK

Tuesday, May 26th 7:30 pm: Zachary Schomburg & James Gendron

If Not For Kidnap Poetry invites you to an evening with local poets Zachary Schomburg and James Gendron!

Beer and wine provided, perhaps food (if we can scrape together the money)! If you feel like it, bring something to share!

Also, donations totally not turned down!

Don't be shy even if you don't know anybody else coming! We promise everyone is very welcoming and kind and super into meeting new people!

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Zachary Schomburg is the author of two books of poems, The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007), and the forthcoming Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean 2009), and some poetry chapbooks, most recently The Pond (Greying Ghost Press) and I Am a Small Boy (Factory Hollow). He co-edits an online poetry magazine, Octopus, and a small press, Octopus Books. He teaches film, literature, and writing at Portland State and Portland Community College.

At INFK Zach will show us poems using video footage from his Olympus snapshot camera. With this manipulated footage, and a combination of text, and music, comes Schomburg's Poem-Film project.

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James Gendron is from the sun. In 1996 he almost died from a cocaine underdose. He votes ironically. For three years, he "lived" in Syracuse. Lou Reed paid for 1/3 of his MFA. His poems are forthcoming in Fence. His band, Stabotage, rules; and this Saturday they're playing at the Kenton Club with Dean Gorman. His poems explore themes of greatness, wonderfulness, patience, charity, and sex. His favorite book is Leaves of Grass, which he one day hopes to go back in time and make obscure, so that he seems cooler. He's in the process of pulling a "Single White Female" on his mentor, Michael Burkard. He's taught at Portland State, Syracuse University, and the Onondaga Nation School.

Inaugural Reading: Tuesday, April 28th 7:30 pm: Kjirsten Severson & Karen Wood Hepner

If Not For Kidnap Poetry invites you to a comfy night of linguistic terror[1] and love revelation[2] with two fantastic local poets:

 

trained in western philosophy and determined to say the impossible by escaping academic language,kjirsten severson was not prepared for her own writing that began to appear when she moved to portland from pittsburgh at the end of 2003. any readily recognized narrative became invisible.

she acquiesced to this unintentional shift and slowly began to develop her own ideas about what was being written. and what was not. currently, she best describes these pieces as an attempt to see a different humanity by breaking into us via cutting and stuttering language and its spaces, especially those key words and absences that frame our fundamental assumptions, but that we tend to rely upon without notice.

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Karen Wood Hepner writes in the mood of a house haunted-- she creates landscapes inside rooms, hallways, cupboards, and under beds. Karen is fascinated by the movement between inner and outer landscapes, and writes poems that navigate these planes freely. In Karen’s world, what we thought we knew is always ending, we become disembodied, we enter realms that remind us of some kind of hope but don’t offer any. Yet at the same time Karen’s world is almost overly corporeal, carnal, raw. It’s in these meaty, tactile images that she moves us into something completely otherworldly where there is no safety or resolution, and we are very alone. Her poems unfold as truths from this silent space.

Karen’s work has appeared in North American Review, Miranda Literary Magazine, the Monterey Bay Poets’ Anthology, Folio, and Toyon. She was a finalist for the 2008 Wabash Prize in Poetry. She recently received her MFA in Writing at Vermont College, and also recently moved to Portland from California.

 

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Where: 3968 SE Mall St., Apt A

When: Tuesday, April 28^th at 7:30

Come as you are, donations not turned down!

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[1] there will probably be no actual terror

[2] there may be true love revelation, though INFKP cannot be held responsible either way