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Event - Poetry Reading & Conversation
BOLD Coffee & Books is thrilled to host a reading and book release with Scott Cannon, author of The Newel Post, Book One: Nonrepresentational Card Panels, in conversation with Adam Oyster-Sands, author of don't call us punk because we hate that.
Scott Cannon has been making abstract art for more than 20 years. His first book is a selection of abstract card panels made between 2022-2025. The work is deeper than just the art though. It's family and connection, daily practice, an honest journaling without words. Join us for a conversation with the artist, a presentation, and limited edition prints available only at the event (free with any book purchase at BOLD while they last).
Scott Cannon lives with his partner and daughter in the evergreen city of Portland, OR. He draws, paints, does woodworking, plays piano, writes short fiction and poetry, and publishes whatever he feels like with his friends.
Adam Oyster-Sands is a high school ELA teacher and poet. His first chapbook, don’t call us punk because we hate that, was released in 2024 by Steel Toe Books. Adam can often be found with his partner Morgan running through forests or walking their dogs around their neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.
Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to grab a snack or drink. The event will start at 7:00 p.m.
January 31, 2026 - Bold Coffee & Books - 1755 SW Jefferson St, Portland, OR
don't call us punk because we hate that
Poetry Chapbook - Steel Toe Books, 2024
Memory and myth. Cigarettes and summer nights. Worship songs and circle pits. don’t call us punk because we hate that traverses the backroads of America’s suburbia in the days before smartphones and AirPods at the very time of life when the aimless youth are waking up to their disillusionment at the world their parents were planting for them. These starkly direct poems speak to the human need for authentic community and escape before they drown in middle-class expectations. The characters, places, and times are pulled from a lived experience and expanded into a universal narrative around the search for something sustainable and true. Adam Oyster-Sands has written a love letter to punk and to those who wove in and out of the various shows, record shops, skate spots, and fast-food joints of his formative years. Whether you’ve spent a Saturday night in a circle pit and Sunday morning in a church pew or not, don’t call us punk because we hate that speaks to anyone who, at the exact right time, found their people in the unexpected places beyond the boundaries of a world passed to them through the stories they inherit.
“Is this memory or myth?” Set in the sweltering, stifling suburbs of Dallas, TX in the 1990s, somewhere between nostalgia and regret, full of grace and longing, sits don’t call us punk because we hate that. Oyster-Sands takes us deep into his memories of growing up, of discovering a music scene that would change him forever, to meet the people that have come and gone in his life, and explore how the slow accrual of years can give us perspective on the unsolvable question of what it all means.
-Scott Cannon, Picture Frame Press
don’t call us punk because we hate that is both sparsely direct and metaphoric as the poems pull you into specific people, places, and times that very well could be your own. Like the best punk bangers do, these poems make the personal universal.
-Book Blurb