The Big Read
"The poetry of Robinson Jeffers is emotionally direct, magnificently musical, and philosophically profound. No one has ever written more powerfully about the natural beauty of the American West. Determined to write a truthful poetry purged of ephemeral things, Jeffers cultivated a style at once lyrical, tough-minded, and timeless." (from the NEA website: http://www.neabigread.org/books/jeffers/)
The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in
partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts
Midwest.
The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The Big Read brings together partners across the community to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment. This year Occidental College received a grant for a Big Read project to celebrate the life and poetry of the great 20th century California poet, Robinson Jeffers. Occidental has called their series of readings, lectures and walking tours, "Robinson Jeffers and the Ecologies of Poetry". The Big Read events, organized by multiple historical, ecological and arts organizations, will take place in several venues around Northeast Los Angeles, October 1 through November 7, 2009.
Event Link on Occidental College site
THE BIG READ: Robinson Jeffers and the Ecologies of Poetry
The Los Angeles Poetry Festival is delighted to present the following three readings, which take their title from a Robinson Jeffers poem.
The Deer Lay Down Their Bones:
Poems by and in the Spirit of
Robinson Jeffers
Reading #1
Saturday, Oct. 3rd, 3 pm
EAGLE ROCK LIBRARY BRANCH
5027 Caspar Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Featuring
Sarah Maclay
Carine Topal
William Archila
Brendan Constantine
(with special guest poets Charlotte Innes and Terry McCarty)
Sarah Maclay's most recent book is The White Bride (U. of Tampa Press). Her poetry has appeared in many literary magazines including Ploughshares, The Writers' Chronicle, lyric, Hotel America, and in Poetry International where she serves as a book review editor.
Carine Topal's new book, In the Heaven of Never Before, from Moon Tide Press, features an introduction by David St. John. Her poem "The Favorite Poet, 1888" won The California Institute of the Arts Robert G. Cohn Prose Poetry Award for 2007.
William Archila immigrated with his family from El Salvador in 1968 when he was 12 to escape the civil war. He received his MFA in Poetry from University of Oregon. His first book came out this year from Bilingual Press, The Art of Exile.
Brendan Constantine is a champion for the literary arts in Southern California. He teaches at the Windward School and is well known for his workshops at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice and for his striking live presentations. He performs his work across the United States, and has been featured at the prestigious "Newer Poets" reading at The Los Angeles Central Library. In addition to Letters to Guns (Red Hen Press), he has published six chapbooks from presses in Los Angeles and Orange County.
Guest Poets:
Charlotte Innes, writer-in-residence at Pilgrim School, will read a
poem from her new chapbook, Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles (Finishing Line
Press). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Spiritual Writing
(2006), The Hudson Review, and other journals.
Terry McCarty's poems were included in the anthologies So Luminous the Wildflowers (Tebot Bach) and The Long Way Home: The Best of the Little Red Book Series 1998-2008 (Lummox Press). Terry was also the host of the Living Room Poetry series in Canoga Park from 2005-2006, as well as the Poetry at Coffee Junction reading in Tarzana during 2007.
The Deer Lay Down Their Bones:
Poems by and in the Spirit of
Robinson Jeffers
Reading #2
Co-Sponsored by Southern California Historical Society
and Lummis Day
Saturday, Oct. 10th, 4 pm
EL ALISAL/LUMMIS HOME
200 E. Avenue 43
Los Angeles, CA 90031
Featuring
Suzanne Lummis
Charles Harper Webb
Cecilia Woloch
Actress Dale Raoul reading the poetry of Robinson Jeffers
(with special guest poet Jamie Asaye FitzGerald)
Suzanne Lummis, in a program funded by the NEA, is one of fifty writers selected to represent Los Angeles at this year's Guadalajara International Book Fair. Her poems appear in California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present (Heyday Books), Poems of the American West (Knopf), Place as Purpose: Poetry of the Western States (Autry/Sun & Moon), and in major literary publications in the U.S. and U.K.
Charles Harper Webb's latest book, out this fall, is Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems, from U. of Pittsburgh Press. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Poets of the New Century. He is the editor of Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, co-editor with Suzanne Lummis of Grand Passion: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, as well as recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. He is a licensed psychotherapist and worked as a professional singer and guitarist for many years.
Cecilia Woloch is the author of four award-winning collections of poems, most recently Narcissus, winner of the Tupelo Press 2006 Snowbound Series Chapbook Award. Carpathia, newly available from BOA Editions Ltd., is her fifth book. She is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California, as well as the founding director of The Paris Poetry Workshop. She spends a part of each year traveling, and in recent years has divided her time between Los Angeles, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Shepherdsville, Kentucky; Paris, France; and a small village in the Carpathian mountains of southeastern Poland.
Dale Raoul plays Maxine Fortenberry—a mother concerned that her son is dating a vampire—in HBO’s hit series True Blood. She’s appeared in many other groundbreaking television series, including Friends, Seinfeld, Six Feet Under and The Office. She has also appeared onstage at many theatres, including the Old Globe in San Diego, the Pasadena Playhouse, Indiana Repertory, New Mexico Repertory, Arizona Repertory and the Los Angeles Theatre Center.
Jamie Asaye FitzGerald’s poetry has appeared in Hunger and Thirst, Speechless the Magazine, Poetic Diversity, MediaCake eMagazine, Ariel, LORE and Snow Monkey, and has been part of the King County Poetry on the Buses Project. She was the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize and the Edward W. Moses Poetry Prize while an undergraduate at the University of Southern California and holds an MFA from San Diego State University. Originally from Hawaii, she lives in Los Angeles where she works for Poets & Writers, Inc.
The Deer Lay Down Their Bones:
Poems by and in the Spirit of
Robinson Jeffers
Reading #3
Saturday, Oct. 17th, 4 - 5:30 pm
ARROYO SECO BRANCH LIBRARY
6145 North Figueroa
Los Angeles, CA 90042
Featuring
Dorothy Barresi
B. H. Fairchild
Lynne Thompson
(with special guest poets, Erika Ayon and Judith Pacht)
Dorothy Barresi is the author of four books of poetry: American Fanatics, forthcoming in 2010 from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Rouge Pulp; The Post-Rapture Diner, winner of an American Book Award; and All of the Above, winner of the Barnard College New Women Poets Award. Her essay “Baby Boom Poets and the New Zeitgeist” appears in the current issue of Prairie Schooner. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Emily Clark Balch Prize, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge and lives in the San Fernando Valley with her husband and sons.
B. H. Fairchild's Art of the Lathe won several awards including The PEN Center USA Poetry Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award. His next book, Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (W. W. Norton), received The National Book Critic's Circle Award.
Lynne Thompson is the 2007 winner of the Perugia Press First Book Prize for Beg No Pardon. Her poems have been collected in the anthologies Voices from Leimert Park and Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets.
Guest Poets:
Erika Ayon was a 2009 PEN fellow in poetry. She's completing her
first chapbook, Orange Lady, drawn from her childhood memories of
working with her father selling fruit out of a cart.
Judith Pacht will read from her new chapbook, User's Guide (Finishing Line Press). Her manuscript, Vectors, was a finalist for the 2008 Philip Levine Prize and Tupelo Press competitions. She won an honorable mention in the 2007 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry.
Los Angeles Poetry Festival
The Los Angeles Poetry Festival has presented over 150 city-wide events that explore the culture, character and history of Los Angeles through the writings of some of the city's most distinctive poets.
Since its creation in 1989, by Suzanne Lummis and Sherman Pearl, The Los Angeles Poetry Festival, in collaboration with many arts and cultural entities—Beyond Baroque, MOCA, The Los Angeles Public Library, The World Stage, The Southwest Musuem, The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, and others—has produced over a hundred fifty readings involving various themes and explorations. Some of these include Women at the Edge, Exiles and Immigrants, Poetry of the Sacred, Hangugin-Yongshi: Images from the Country of the Morning Calm, Poetry and the Unbroken Line (Poets and Fiction Writers), The Poetry of Conscience, Play Ball! Poets Take on the American Sport, Tribute to Black Bards, Mermaids Singing: Contemporary Voices in Classical Forms, La Poesia de la Americas, The Mythical Works of Yeats, Jump into the POOL! (A celebration of the literary magazine, Pool) and Poetry, Dreams and Healing: A Workshop.
If you would like to help support this valuable service please contact the Los Angeles Poetry Festival.
Los Angeles Poetry Festival and Newer Poets Reading
The LA Poetry Festival nominates three poets for the annual Newer Poets reading at the Central Library in downtown LA.
Poetry Noir
Poetry and the Movies
To enter Poetry Noir, click a door and walk in.
Noir Design by Penelope Torribio and Suzanne Lummis