Ascend Ascend: A Poetic Performance

Join mystic poet and performer Janaka Stucky for an immersive, multidisciplinary performance involving light, scent, and sound to introduce his new book of poetry ASCEND ASCEND. Janaka will be joined by cellist and composer Lori Goldston who has collaborated with artists ranging from Nirvana to Mark Mitchell and Lynn Shelton.

Written over the course of twenty days coming in and out of trance states while secluded in the tower of a 100-year-old church, Janaka’s new book ASCEND ASCEND is rooted in the Jewish mystical tradition of Hekhalot literature.  Equal parts Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” this long poem documents the ecstatic destruction of the self through its union with the divine.

In partnership with Atlas Obscura and Third Man Books, two-time National Haiku Champion Janaka will be presenting his new work in its entirety on a 2019 tour to a series of stunning, viscerally appropriate venues in Washington D.C., Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. In Seattle, Janaka will be performing at All Pilgrims. 

Tickets to each event will include a copy of the book, with an option available to acquire a deluxe, limited-edition only available on this Atlas Obscura tour.  

ABOUT LORI GOLDSTON

Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher based in Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic is full, textured, committed and original. A perpetual inquirer, she wanders recklessly across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography, performing in clubs, cafes, galleries, arenas, concert halls, sheds, ceremonies, barbecues, and sanctuaries.