Birdhouse Books and Christopher Luna welcome Portland poets Douglas Spangle, Michael Shay, and M. F. McAuliffe to June’s First Friday Poetry Night!

First Friday Poetry Night! is a poetry series featuring an everchanging slate of talented local poets hosted by Birdhouse Books and Christopher Luna. Catch us on First Friday at 7pm in the heart of VDA’s Art Walk. Drop by early to browse the books, soak in the art, and pick up some delicious treats upstairs at Short & Sweet before the show.

Note: This will be our final reading at this location because Birdhouse Books will be relocating at the end of June. Full details in the announcement below.

Holbrook Award winner Douglas Spangle will read from his collection, A White Concrete Day.

Michael Shay will read from his collection, The Words I Own

M. F. McAuliffe will read from her chapbook, The Fires

Douglas Spangle was born in Roanoke, Virginia and raised in a Park Service family, living in various western states in childhood. In 1966 his family moved overseas and he spent the latter two of his high school years in Ankara, Turkey. He later spent four years as a stagehand at the Münchener Kammerspiele Schauspielhaus. For many years he studied and translated the poems of Peter Huchel; he is currently translating the Swiss-German poems of Clemens Umbricht and Florian Vetsch. His own poems have been widely published and are founded on his lifelong habit of precise observation: of the natural world – the actions and habits of its human and non-human inhabitants, the light in still life that becomes transcendent.

Michael Shay was born in Ludwigschafen am Rein in Germany and grew up in Chicago. At the University of Iowa he studied with Louise Gluck, was chosen to attend the summer session of the Iowa graduate Poetry Workshop, & studied with Marvin Bell. He also holds a Master of Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary and Experimental Art. He is co-editor of two anthologies from the Broken Word poetry reading series at the Alberta Street Pub in Northwest Portland, 2004-2007. His work has appeared in literary journals including The South Carolina Review, Nimrod, and Rhino.

M. F. McAuliffe made her U.S. debut in Damon Knight’s The Clarion Awards. Her work has appeared in the Australian science fiction poetry anthology The Stars Like Sand, and in translation in Poezija (Zagreb), and Thraca (Athens). Her long poem “Orpheus” was staged by La Mama (Melbourne) as “Orpheus, an Australian Tragedy” at the Courthouse Theatre, Carlton, in May 2000. A long-time resident of Portland, Oregon, she is co-founder and co-editor of the Portland-based, multilingual journal Gobshite Quarterly, and also edits titles for the quarterly’s offshoot press, Reprobate/GobQ Books.