By Mike Sonsken
FROM: KCET.org

Over the last three decades, the Los Angeles Poetry community has grown into one of the most diverse and active scenes in this city. Before the pandemic, dozens of readings were held weekly and usually at least four or five simultaneously on the same day in different corners of L.A. County. Nonetheless, in a gentrifying city, with the exception of a few long-term spaces like Beyond Baroque, Skylight Books, Stories or the World Stage, the poetry scene is transitory. Many readings only last a few years before the gallery or coffeehouse hosting it goes out of business or the folks who organize the reading find a demanding job that takes them away from poetry. This is where Hiram Sims comes in.

Sims is a professor, poet and lifelong resident of South Central Los Angeles who uses poetry to uplift his community. Sims has been deeply embedded in the city’s literary scene from his late teens. Over the last two decades, he has read all over the city from prestigious universities and literary festivals to bookstores and backyard barbecues. Within a few years of being an active poet, he began noticing how ephemeral the scene is.

Sims’s antidote is to open his library of poetry. Located on Florence in the Crenshaw District, just north of Inglewood and a few blocks east of Crenshaw, the recently opened Sims Library of Poetry is an outgrowth of the Community Literature Initiative (CLI) founded by Sims in 2013. A low concrete fence in front of the library reads: “Poetry Lives Here.”

Originally housed in his garage less than seven blocks away, Sims now has over 4,000 poetry books spread across 18 bookshelves. They have a computer lab, some gallery space and even a private room for scribes that need a silent place to write. There are no other libraries in Southern California devoted to only poetry and only a few similar spaces exist across America. Read Rest of Article Here