Paradiso featuring poets Hamish Ballantyne and Joe Stapleton + Softer

Shadowbox welcomes the long-running Paradiso poetry & performance series!

Paradiso, a reading and performance series that pairs innovative out-of-town writers with talent from North Carolina’s research triangle area, makes its Shadowbox debut. Founded in 2018 out of Nightlight Bar and Club, Paradiso is co-curated by poets Marta Núñez Pouzols and Laura Jaramillo.

Hamish Ballantyne is a poet and translator based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples (Vancouver, Canada). He works in the Downtown Eastside and as a commercial mushroom picker. He has published two chapbooks, Imitation Crab (Knife/Fork/Book, 2020) and Blue Knight (Auric Press, 2022) and published his first full-length Tomorrow is a Holiday (New Star) in 2024.

Joe Stapleton is a high school English teacher in Durham, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Kelsea, and their two children, Rose and Will.

Softer is the solo project of Carrboro’s Nathan Taylor. Taylor has previously performed as N Bath, Sponge Bath, and as one half of the duo MARV, releasing on labels like Enmossed, Tone Log Records, and Activ-Analog. Active in the North Carolina underground since 2010, he employs techniques associated with the traditions of tape music, dub, sound design, noise, dance, and electro-acoustic improvisation. His music sublimates sonic abstraction into a focused distillation; attempting to bring the listener into a shared world of strange affections, confusion, and dissonant beauty.

$10 admission. Doors 4 pm, reading at 4:30 pm. BYO or sample what’s on hand.