Rebecca Brown, the smartest writer in Seattle, has been out of commission recovering from a broken ankle. But with spring poking its fuzzy little head out of the newly muddy earth, Brown seems eager to get off the couch and out into the world with at least two events this month. This Thursday at Gallery 1412, Brown will be reading new and old work to celebrate her long winter's hibernation and her new spring awakening.

Brown is helping to celebrate two other writers with local ties. Kreg Hasegawa, one of the tech-savviest employees at the Seattle Public Library, is somehow finding the time during the library's website relaunch to launch a new chapbook into the world. (Hasegawa, of course, is a member of the Margin Shift poetry collective, so he knows his poetry.)

Either of these authors alone would be reason to show up for a reading, but they're joining together to celebrate a very special occasion: the triumphant return of Seattle poet Nico Vassilakis. Vassilakis, one of the world's preeminent visual poetry experts, lived here for years before leaving town for New York City a while back. In the time since, he's been hard at work blurring the line between visual art and poetry - between language and symbols and design.

Vassilakis is visiting town to celebrate the release of his newest book, In The Breast Pocket of a Fine Overcast Day Unlike some of his more outrageous visual poetry work, Pocket is a collection of more conventional poems written between 2010 and 2015. These are poems about love and subways and beauty and death and all the subjects that move poets to write.

Vassilakis was for years a pillar of the poetry community, representing at poetry and comics events all around town, and supporting poets as they started out. This brief return - especially with a book of poems that were in part written here - is a special kind of homecoming.

Gallery 1412, 1412 18th Ave, 7 pm, free.