Overview

"Flowers of the Litter is a collection of poetry of and for people living on the street. The works in this collection are produced by street poets who live in and around Portland, Oregon. Many of these poets are vendors, writers, and journalists for the Street Roots Newspaper. Their work graces these pages alongside the work of more widely known national and international poets. This is a book of poetry for people who generally don't read poetry, selected primarily for those struggling on the streets. It has risen from the streets, dropping stanzas as loving rain. It seeks not to exclude in any way, and hopes education or opportunity precludes none.All of the street poets in this book live in and around Portland, Oregon. Many are vendors, writers, and journalists for the Street Roots Newspaper and come to Street Roots for poetry classes weekly. These poets are members of our community. All are survivors. And some are no longer with us. It is an honor to have their work and creative expression in this book. Lynette Snook Kat Black Bronwyn Carver Joseph ""Whitecloud"" Smits Dumpsta D Daniel Toole Maddy Brown-Clark George McCarthy Arc Angel Mykaiel Shaggyadditional contributorsGeorge WallaceBill LewisResa AlboherPankhuri SinhaEagle Spits"

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Reviews

"""The poems that comprise Flowers of the Litter are compelling because they express the raw emotion and trauma of being houseless. But this is not to say the poetry is sad because they filled me with joy and wonder. The words ""hope"" and ""love"" occur over and over in the poems, and the poets speak of friendship, community, gratitude, and laughter. The poets speak of grace, kindness, and charity, but not that they receive from nonprofits but of the grace, kindness, and charity they give to one another. Flowers of the Litter provides a window in the community and family that exists among our unsheltered neighbors. In ""Haiku"" by Resa Alboher, the speaker proclaims, ""We want to fly too."" In this profound collection of poems, these poets not only fly but soar.""-Scott Kerman, Executive Director of Blanchet House, Portland The collection of poetry contained in this book allows us to see each other, hear each other, and remember we are all connected. We are all in this together. -Sisters of the Road, Portland A wonderful combination of unhoused poets together with housed poets creating kindness and compassion for people struggling on the streets! -Marcus Lampros, Board Member Meals on Wheels, Portland Houseless people in the United States are intended to be silenced, to be surrounded by useless platitudes and cliches. The disease of forced silence can only be healed by cherishing the words of those whom no one was intended to listen to. Within this cover are the lost words that are now found. Cherish.-Pastor Steven Kimes, Eugene, Oregon FLOWERS OF THE LITTER is not just another collection of poems. This is an outstanding anthology of subtle and gentle activist poems, that centre the misery of the hapless, homeless folks, who live under the skies, moving from street to street, living on scraps of leftovers like hungry scavengers. The timeless voice of Walt Whitman resonates in the excerpts juxtaposed alongside the voices of 21st century living poets, reminding readers that our much canvassed progress has been selective and discriminatory, the irony of cyclical progression, trapped between change and continuity. The anguish and protest in these poems do not incite anger. Instead, as the poet and editor Mimi German states in her preamble, the poems included in FLOWERS OF THE LITTER spur a wakeup call by striving to ignite our sense of empathy for those who we see and hear and yet see and hear them not. -Dr. Sanjukta Dasgupta, President, Executive Committee, Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata, Visiting Professor, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (2018)Honorary Visiting Professor, Dept. of English, Sister Nivedita University"

Author Information

Mimi German is an American poet, subversive artist, advocate for the unhoused, and queer childless cat lady dividing her time between life in the wilderness of Oregon's Steens Mountain where she lives with her partner. and the urban strife of Portland, OR. She has written four books of poetry since 2022, culminating with Flowers of the Litter, co-edited by Mimi German and Carl Spiby from the UK, a collection of poems written by both unhoused and housed poets across the world.Mimi German has worked extensively with unhoused communities in Portland and worked as an advocate inside Portland's city hall where she often used her poetry as testimony against arbitrary rules against houselessness brought on by Mayor Ted Wheeler. Between 2015-2023, Mimi helped to establish unpermitted encampments run by houseless communities, much to the extreme ire and frustration of Portland's mayor, city council, cops, and park rangers. Her first book of poetry, Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars released in 2022, wove her experiences and observations about the crisis of houselessness through her poetry. During the pandemic, Eye Publish Ewe published Mimi's third book, Where Grasses Bend as well as WAR POEMS Israel- Gaza/The First 100 Days of Carnage which has also become an art installation.German's poetry has been published in numerous journals and books including New Generation Beats Anthologies, in Maintenant 18/ Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, in the Clarion Quarterly Journal #2, in Walt Whitman's Corner in the Long Islander, and in the UK in International Times(IT) and Steel JackDaw Magazine. She was named Oregon's first New Beat Generation Poet Laureate (2023-2025) by the National Beat Poetry Foundation. Karlostheunhappy is the author of the Gloomy for Pleasure poetry collection 'OBLIVION: 200 Seasons of Pain & Magic' and the soon to be release sequel 'FLUX: the turning leaves'. His work has featured in the leading Beat magazine, Beatdom, and numerous anthologies including 2024's 'After Hours' a Beat anthology by the Broken Spine Press and IT (International Times). He also he read at Oxford's Blackwells for Kerouac's centenary. He was secretary of the Forest of Dean Stop the War campaign in 2003 and a lifelong CND member. He runs an employee-owned software business where the engines of their success are the benefactors of that success. He was named Beat Poet Laureate (England) for 2022-23 by the Beat Poetry Foundation and was editor at BeatSurreal a 90s underground litzine, and co-editor for the Forest of Dean & Wye Valley Clarion, a local socialist monthly. An annual of Beatsurreal is due in 2024 through the Gloomy for Pleasure press. Born in Newport, Wales, he has lived all his life in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. Fred Voss lives in Long Beach, California and is the author of numerous collections of poetry from 1991's 'Goodstone' to 'Someday, There Will Be Machine Shops Full of Roses' (2023) and the novel 'Making America Strong' (2015). He abandoned a PhD in English lit at University of California to go work in a machine shop, and that 50 years became the inspiration for 'Someday..'.Smokestack Books said of this last collection establish Voss as the heir to Charles Bukowski, Philip Levine and Robert Tressell.

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