By Jireh Deng
FROM: L.A. Times

The sun was setting into the haze, birds circling above an outdoor stage set up in a private residence at the top of Montecito Heights, as poets read of heartache and survival to an audience seated on hay bales.

The occasion was “Readings at Sunset: A Queer Poetry Night,” and before the pandemic, its host, Cuties Los Angeles, was a coffee shop in East Hollywood. The store closed under COVID’s financial strain, and now it has evolved into a virtual space curating in-person and online LGBTQ events.

That golden August evening was a sign of renewal but also of potentially irreversible change. Over a year marked by illness, anxiety and economic turmoil that has hit event venues particularly hard, poets found creative ways to gather online, but as social distancing measures have eased even in the face of the Delta variant, the vibrant poetry scene in Los Angeles is beginning to make a tentative comeback, with new sites established and old spaces reborn.

Among the new arrivals, open to masked audiences with proof of vaccination, are the Sims Library of Poetry in South L.A. and Re/Arte Centro Literario in Boyle Heights. Other hosts, including Sunday Jump in Historic Filipinotown and the Autry Museum of the American West, are Southern California mainstays making similarly cautious returns. Read Rest of Article Here