Wordlights Poetry Showcase & Curated Mic
Quarterly Poetry Night at CoHo
Organized by Igor Bjorn Brezhnev
August 11, 2023 from 7-9 PM
“Support Living Artists ‘Cause the Dead Ones Don’t Need It”
Lightship Press and CoHo Productions have teamed up this year to present you with a quarterly poetry showcase and a curated mic. In each two-hour show we bring you three established poet features and eight poets on our curated mic. The showcase is hosted by the co-founder of Lightship Press and longtime host of Wordligths poetry series Igor Bjorn Brezhnev. Join us and delve into some of the best poetry in Portland and stay tuned for touring poets.
Poetry Night Season Subscriptions
To help fund this year’s programming, Wordlights has released a limited number of Season Tickets available for all poetry events occurring in 2023. There will only be 25 Season Tickets available, and subscriptions can be purchased for a flat rate of $200 on the Wordlights website. Funds from the purchase of season tickets help cover expenses of publishing broadsides and an anthology, rental costs, and help pay our poets for their performances. Season Ticket Holders will receive reserved front-row seats to all four poetry events in 2023, copies of both the broadsides and anthology poetry collections, and additional raffle entries as a thank you for your support.
Upcoming Shows in 2023
About the Organizer
Igor Bjorn Brezhnev has over two decades of experience as a poet and book designer. Creativity and art are a medicine to him. Igor is a regular fixture at poetry readings, open mics, and book releases, often stepping forward to organize and host these events himself.
His most recent body of work is titled nights since. It is a series of 363 poems written every night from January 18th, 2019 to January 14th, 2020 which documents the emotional landscape of being without a home. The first 66 poems were self-published in two chapbooks, nights since volume one and nights since volume two in 2019. volume three and volume four came out in 2020. The rest of volumes in the series are scheduled to be published throughout 2021 and 2022.
Igor’s other work includes two full-length poetry books dearest void (2016) and america is dry cookie and other love stories (2018)) and a number of spoken-word albums. Igor is also the founder and curator of Wordlights, a weekly poetry reading series in Portland, Oregon, and runs Lightship Press, a small press focused on publishing poetry.
As regular participants in the Portland poetry scene, friends & founders Igor Bjorn Brezhnev and Sam Preminger recognized far too many talented poets unable to produce books or earn any reasonable income as artists. While grateful to share our city with many wonderful publishers, it seemed that none were designed with supporting working authors in mind—and so the idea for Lightship Press was born: a press dedicated to publishing, promoting, and advocating for living artists.
Igor took the initial steps, founding Lightship Press in 2019 with Sam as a contributing editor. In the first year, the press successfully published six poetry collections, in addition to hosting countless community events to support these contributors. All the books produced were sold directly by the poets, ensuring these artists retained the greatest possible share of the profits, and plans began to expand the press’s reach in the years ahead. But then the pandemic happened. In the interests of safety and self-care, Lightship went into a state of deep hibernation for two years.
Now in 2022, Igor and Sam have returned with renewed vigor and are re-launching Lightship with only greater hope and ambitions. Together, they’ve decided to resume book production, to imagine a new model of publishing designed to favor authors, and to aspire towards creating a critical community resource for working writers.
CoHo needs your support
CoHo is a nonprofit theater that heavily relies on the generosity of our community to continue. If you support our mission, please give what you can!