Readings, workshops & projects
Altar-Altered: Sacred Objects + Adoption Stories
Adoption uncensored. It’s love and loss. Connection, disconnection, reconnection.
Adoption weaves through lives, fundamentally altering them. Spanning generations and cultures, six people share their adoption stories through the lens of personally sacred objects — with links to their projects. Interviews by Alex Behr. Paintings ©Christine Shields.
Antlers and Beehives: Writing in Natural Patterns
A two-part class with Alex Behr
Monday January 22nd and 29th, 2024 :: 5pm to 7pm Pacific :: over ZOOM, Corporeal Writing. FULL.
In this two-part zoom workshop, we’ll explore two forms described in Jane Allison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative: fractals (antlers) and networks (beehives). This encounter may cause a little brain resistance as you break down inherited rules about “proper” narrative progression. However, the outcomes might crack through writer’s block or ennui and generate a gateway to your ephemeral somatic spirit. As Allison writes, “[Fractal and branching] patterns aren’t just around us: they inform our bodies, too. … Our brains recognize and want [these] patterns.”
Adoption Passages
An Evening of Stories, Music and Art
Adoption Passages, filmed and edited by VoMcBurney at Open Signal, is streaming on YouTube
In this broadcast, eight performers voice their own truths across cultures and generations. The contents are not suitable for all audiences.
Alex Behr on breastfeeding as an adoptive mom.
After meeting her birth father, Maya Noah deepens her political activism.
Lincoln Kwan Miller creates environmental self-portraits as a search for identity.
Nastashia Minto performs poetry to honor her grandparents.
Ali Maaxa shares synchronous bonds with her newly found birth mother.
William Smith on sacrifices made by his adoptive and birth mothers.
Amy Temple Harper on pretending she’s white.
Ending with music performed by Jo Brickman.
Grief Stick
In 2023 I received a RACC Arts3C grant to support the experimental film “Grief Stick,” using my poetry, incidental sounds, and film/still images. Editing and sequencing by Brian Padian. Poems recorded by Ollie Sims.
Eno/Ono: How Music and Art Can Enhance Our Writing
Four-part Creative Lab through Corporeal Writing, presented 2x
“I’m so enjoying your class — the exercises, the journal, the new pathways to writing — thank you for offering it into the world.”
—Margaret
“I’d rarely want to take a lab more than once, but I would return because I could get new material from the same portals/prompts, ideas, and leading that you did. This is one of THE best labs I’ve ever taken at Corporeal Writing. Hands down. You are a brilliant teacher.”
—Katie
Alex’s class presentations opened new, imaginative paths to creativity for me using music, poetry, and the work of Brian Eno, Yoko Ono, Matthew Salesses, Michael Ondaatje and other brilliant writers. Alex’s insights are deep, original and funny. I loved the class and will sign up for more.
—Peter
We seek musical metaphors to enrich our writing, and we use writing to describe musical enigmas.
Through exploring Brian Eno’s and Yoko Ono’s writing as prompts, writing our own, listening to music, responding to guided visualizations, and viewing our writing as musically enriched exercises, we’ll develop new pathways as we shape written memories, poems, or fiction into whatever we consider art. We’ll go outside, improvise collective writing, and share our own pieces aloud at the end of the workshop.
Events / Readings
2024
Jan, Cold Plum Wine reading w/ Matthew Dickman, Up Up Books
2023
Dec, Come as You Are, Rose City Book Pub
Dec, Hot Pockets, Turn! Turn! Turn!
Dec, Filament Reading Series, PSU MFA program
Nov, Adoption Passages, Open Signal
Aug, Coffee and Grief, Zoom
Aug, Treat podcast reading, Turn! Turn! Turn!
Aug, Red House Reading Series, Portland
Apr. 1, Expanse poetry reading series, Soliloquy Gallery
Mar. 15, Hot Pockets! Readings from rock bios, Turn! Turn! Turn!
Feb, WITS reading, Literary Arts
2022
Nov., Led Teen Poetic Sculpture Workshop at Portland Book Festival. Portland Art Museum
Oct., Hocus Reading
Oct., Stranged Writing book release party
2021
June 17, WITS writers biannual reading (Zoom)
2020
November, Sold-out (albeit free) workshop at the Portland Book Fest 2020, grades 3-5: Portal to an Alternate Universe
Apr. 25, Coffee Talk #5 (Zoom)
Jan. 25, .:LOOP:. Corporeal Writing Jag, Portland, OR
2019
Nov. 7, Propeller Reading, Rocking Frog, Portland, OR
Oct. 25, Filament Reading Series, IPRC, Portland, OR
AWP Portland, Offsite Readings:
Mar. 30, WITS Alliance, Literary Arts, Portland, OR
Mar. 28, Filament Reading Series, Mother Foucault’s Bookstore, Portland, OR
2018
Nov. 29, Writers in the Schools, Literary Arts, Portland, OR
Sept. 22, Submission Poetry Reading, Chapbook Release Party, IPRC, Portland, OR
May 12, Submission Reading Series, IPRC
Apr. 28, Independent Bookstore Day, Annie Bloom’s Books, Portland, OR
Apr. 18, 7.13 Books, guest-hosted by publisher Leland Cheuk, Guerrilla Lit Reading Series, New York, NY
Feb. 22, PSU MFA Alumni Reading, Portland, OR
Feb. 5, Grief Rites Foundation, Post 134, Portland, OR
Feb. 2, Songbook 10, Post 143, Portland, OR
2017
Dec. 10, Dead Rabbits Reading Series, DTUT Bar, New York City
Dec. 7, Spoonbill and Sugartown Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY
Nov. 15, Broadway Books, Portland, OR
Nov. 11, POP-UP Reading at Wordstock, Portland Art Museum
Nov. 10, LitCrawl PDX, Unchaste and Mutha Writers, Hotel Vintage Bar, Portland, OR
Oct. 23, at Annie Bloom’s, with Jenny Forrester, Portland, OR
Oct. 14, LitQuake SF, Ritual Coffee Roasters, San Francisco
Oct. 13, LitQuake SF, Adobe Books, San Francisco
Oct. 12, Planet Grim Book Release, Powell’s Books in Conversation with Mary Rechner, Portland, OR
2016
Oct. 5, VoiceCatcher Reading at Corkscrew Wine Bar, Portland, OR
Jul. 10, Performance of two stories through the 5th Annual Northern Writes, Round 1, Federal Bar, Los Angeles
2015
Dec. 3, Bad Girls reading and performance of no wave and punk covers by Born in a Car, Turn, Turn, Turn, Portland, OR