split 7inch vinyl record

For my latest project, I got the opportunity to work with a handful of artists that I love. 

I recorded some poems for the flipside of a 7inch vinyl record. The San Francisco band Sweat Lodge has two songs on their side. 

Songwriter/musician Robbie Cohen recorded my poems, so he also added some brilliant soundscapes behind them. We even got an amazing cover from Bay Area artist John Vochatzer so the whole thing turned out great. Much thanks for Related Records for putting all the pieces in place in the best way possible.

You can order a vinyl copy from me RIGHT HERE 

But even if you don't have a record player, Related Records has all the tracks available to stream for free if you want to LISTEN HERE

 

Jackalope In Retrograde

I got an opportunity from the Arizona Commission On The Arts to do a reading that incorporated projected images throughout the performance.

So I was able to put together a show at one of the iconic Phoenix venues The Trunk Space with some of my favorite artists and we called the night Jackalope In Retrograde.

JJ Horner was doing live painting. 

GOHNE opened the night (new band project from Lonna Kelley and Jay Hufman)

Writer Erik Bitsui came down from Flagstaff.

 

The Necronauts played as a two-piece and were also joined by Rocky Yazzie for a set.

 

Most of my images were Jia Oak Baker's photographs from our collaborative book Gravity & Spectacle, but we also had some bonus content, videos etc.

 

 

rinky dink press AWP offsite reading in Philadelphia

Tonissa Saul and I had a great time handling the rinky dink press table at the AWP Philadelphia bookfair.

 

We launched a brand new series featuring (clockwise in photo) Ann Pedone, Kurt Mikhael, Eric Dovigi, Michael Buckius, Jamie King, Halsey Hyer, Veronica Jarboe, S.G. Maldonado-Vélez, Emily Hoover, and Jessica Rich.

 

We made some special "bite size" AWP packs that were pretty popular and sold out on day two. 

And we had a stellar offsite reading Upstairs at The 700 that was organized by our friend Lindsay A. Chudzik for Feels Blind Literary   

We were proud to have four rinky dink press authors (Halsey Hyer, Michael Buckius, Susan Nguyen, and Jesse Sensibar) and they were terrific.

 

 

 

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our table and came to our offsite 💙 

See you in Seattle!

Metaverse Book Tours for a Southwestern Book Award Finalist

Very cool to see that our book was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards 

Thanks to Tolsun Books for figuring out how to combine Jia Oak Baker's photographs and my poems in convenient paperback form exactly how we envisioned but better.

 

Since all of my celebrations are virtual, here are a few more of those "Poetic Distancing Reading Series" video sessions that I did instead of whatever book tour I was planning before the pandemic.

I almost had to give up on this one in the canal because every take kept getting ruined by screeching jets from the nearby airbase. Another example of the Military Industrial Complex budget squashing local arts. I will edit together a bunch of these outtakes that feature me cursing at the sky as if those pilots might be able to hear me. 

My poems in this next video address Portlandian hipster-ness, 90s album covers, fleeting punk fashion statements, and my longtime appreciation of Chris Cornell. The shadows reminded me of a classic Soundgarden video, so I wore one of those shirts that former Phoenix skater (and longtime friend of Chris Cornell) Kevin Staab put out for his 90 skate company, since Chris often wore those, as seen in their video for Fell On Black Days:

Maybe a few other times.

 

Thankful for this Book Review from Sundress and some Rodney Mullen clips

Speaking of thanks, Jia and I were also extremely grateful for this amazing review of Gravity & Spectacle from Shannon Wolf at the Sundress Blog:

"There is something both cheeky and somber about Baker and Orion’s united perspective. 

 Orion’s poems are as close to punk rock as we can get in 2021." 

You can read the full review at https://sundressblog.com/2021/02/08/sundress-reads-gravity-spectacle-by-shawnte-orion-and-jia-oak-baker/

Wolf mentions that a few of the poems reference legendary skateboarder Rodney Mullen, so here is some of that backstory: The central art piece in all of Jia's photographs was made by artist JJ Horner. Since JJ co-founded the skate company Pyramid Country. We wanted to make sure to pay some homage to those roots, through our photos and poems. So we made a few trips to the skatepark next to Cowtown Skateboards 

Since Rodney Mullen is brilliant on a skateboard and in conversation, I tried to cut-up some fragments of language and phrases from his interviews and biography "The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself" and shape them into new out-of-context found poems... the same way skateboarders use his techniques as building blocks for new tricks.

Here's one of my favorite interviews, so you can see that Mullen is poetic both on and off his board and also how his descriptions of the skate community can also be easily applied to the writing community.

Stinkweeds Record Store and the Academy Of American Poets

Excited to say that our book is now available at Stinkweeds Record Store if you're ever in Downtown Phoenix. This is especially cool because back in high school, I used to drive out to Kimber Lanning's original shops in Mesa and Tempe to buy import bootleg CDs. I've also seen in-store performances by folks like Jello Biafra and Lou Barlow's Folk Implosion over the years.
Since Jia's photos and my poems were heavily influenced by some of our beloved Phoenix bands, we're proud to have this book available in that same iconic record store for less than it would cost from Amaz*n (in keeping with Kimber's local indie-first ethos localfirstaz.com).

In more literary news, Gravity & Spectacle got a great shout out from the Academy Of American Poets (what!?!) in an issue American Poets Magazine! It was almost surreal for Jia and I to see ourselves listed on the back cover with writers like Joy Harjo, Forrest Gander, Natalie Diaz, Adrian Matejka, and other heroes.
 

Inside the magazine, there was a wonderful write-up by Phoenix Poet Laureate Rosemarie Dombrowski along with one of my sample poems from the book:

 

 

 

Up The Staircase Review of Gravity & Spectacle

Having our book out during the pandemic was strange, since we couldn't encounter people at readings or lit festivals. It made you wonder if it was really "out there" in the world. So we truly appreciated seeing a few book reviews pop up every once in awhile. The first one came from Up The Staircase Quarterly by the brilliant ​Alina Stefanescu:

"There is the newness, the cultural backdrops, the poem that critiques the clickbaited brain, ... and all the ways in which being hip is plotted against being the credible fuck-up, the heartbreak of Chris Cornell's death, the muffled critique of the new place that appears, namely, the chic Portland."

 Read the full review at https://www.upthestaircase.org/gravity--spectacle.html