Los Angeles Poets and the Temper of Our Times
by Luis J. Rodriguez
From: LAPL BLOG
Let us dare haunting verse of the oppressed,
poems with hoodies, finger-tapping, ambling.
I mean pissed off and ardently expressed,
poems delirious as midnight rambling.
Bebop, Hip Hop, a decima or slam,
metered lyrics, free shaped texts… no matter,
bring out the fire, the punch, a resounding jam.
Let it ring far, a magnificent chatter.
Naming the nameless, voicing the unheard,
questioning the questions, swimming, splashing.
No expert strokes but damn if not expert word;
every line bleeding, grieving, pleading, slashing.
The power of poetry is its stance,
page or stage, electrifying or trance.
Continue reading “Los Angeles Poets and the Temper of Our Times”
OTHER BOOKS AND A FEW MORE AFTER THAT
From: Entropy
It’s no secret that Literary Los Angeles is hotter than the Mojave. The following essay is a dispatch spotlighting a new bookstore and several recent books.
The latest great news is the opening of a new bookstore in Boyle Heights, OTHER BOOKS / OTROS LIBROS on Cesar Chavez and Cummings. Located a block from the legendary eatery Guisados, the new store is a collaboration between the proprietors of Seite Books, formerly in East Los Angeles and KAYA Press. This new store is highly anticipated because Seite has always had an incredible collection of titles and KAYA Press is one of the West Coast’s most innovative presses. Seite was forced to relocate because their lease was not renewed on their original space and this new partnership puts them on an even busier street in collaboration with KAYA, so it’s a double blessing for aficionados of local literature.
PUBLIC NOTEBOOK TO BOOK: AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY C. ORTIZ
From: Women Who Submit
Saturday December 3, 2016 Wendy C. Ortiz will lead the 3rd installment in the WWS Fall Workshop Series: Public Notebook to Book. Ortiz is the author of two memoirs, Excavation(Future Tense Books, 2014) and Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and has her third book, Bruja, being release October 31, 2016 from Civil Coping Mechanisms.
Ortiz has used journals and public notebooks throughout her career. In fact, “Hollywood Notebook, a prose poem-ish memoir, and Bruja, a dreamoir, both began as public notebooks and eventually found their way to becoming print books,” and in her workshop, Ortiz will share strategies for keeping a notebook and how to shape it into a piece of writing intended for an audience.
Continue reading “PUBLIC NOTEBOOK TO BOOK: AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY C. ORTIZ”
AN INTERVIEW WITH XOCHITL-JULISA BERMEJO
From: Sundress Press
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the author of the forthcoming collection of poetry Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications, 2016). Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge is a feminist collection of poetry straddling borders, and arose when daughter of Mexican immigrants, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, traveled from Los Angeles to the Tucson-Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2011 to volunteer with the humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. She hoped to gain a concrete understanding of the “wall,” and the result was a book illustrating a speaker driven to activism by a need to honor her family’s journey.
Bermejo spoke with our Editorial Intern, Kristin Figgins, about her influences, her family, the work that helped inspire the collection, and more.
Los Angeles Literature Events 10/17/16 – 10/23/16
Concha Y Café Workshop at Junipero Serra Branch Library
Join us every Monday for the Conchas Y Café adult creative writing workshop, presented by DSTL Arts. Work with local artists on the DIY arts of: writing poetry, drawing mini-comics, collaged illustration, self-publishing and making zines.
Where: Junipero Serra Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 6 pm -7:30 pm
Address: 4607 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90037
Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/concha-y-cafe-talleres-de-escritura-creativa
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/17/16 – 10/23/16”
Natashia Deón may be the hardest-working debut novelist in Los Angeles
By Tyler Malone
From: Los Angeles Times
Justice is a concept that is always on Natashia Deón’s mind. As a lawyer, a law professor, a mother and now a novelist, it undergirds all she does.
Sitting in her writing space, a cozy converted garage in a home not far from Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, flanked by a spiral staircase and a Murphy bed, a dark wood desk and an overstuffed bookshelf, she says, “The first time that I wanted to quit being a lawyer was two weeks after I passed the Bar.”
Continue reading “Natashia Deón may be the hardest-working debut novelist in Los Angeles”
Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge
by Olga García Echeverría
From: labloga.blogspot.com
In Posada: Offerings of Refuge and Witness, author Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo takes us on a journey that begins with the story of her grandmother’s stolen “black lava” metate. The narrator in the poem is stitching together a past full of gaps. Like many of us, Bermejo is hungry for knowing the stories of those who came before her.
“Who carried the metate and molcajete from Teocaltiche?” the poet asks her father who migrated to the United States from Mexico with his family when he was a boy. “I don’t remember,” he answers. But the poet deciphers that it must have been him, her father, the eldest son, who carried her grandmother’s only valuables from Mexico. She writes, “Maybe remembering hurts dusty shoulders, maybe they miss the weight of home too much.”
Los Angeles Literature Events 10/10/16 – 10/16/16
Rodrigo Toscano at Pomona College
Join us for a public reading by Rodrigo Toscano, poet and author of Explosion Rocks Springfield. Raised in southern California, poet, playwright and labor activist Rodrigo Toscano’s experimental work often takes the form of conversation and physical movement that interrogates, and crosses borders: the border between poetic and political action, between the made thing and its making, between speech and theater, between languages, between social change and its provocation.
Where: Pomona College, Crookshank Hall Room #108
Date: Monday the 10th
Time: 4:15 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 140 W. Sixth St., Claremont, CA 91711
Website: http://www.pomona.edu/events/literary-series-rodrigo-toscano
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/10/16 – 10/16/16”
Latino/a Writers of Los Angeles and Southern California
In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the following is a celebration of Los Angeles’ rich Latino literary tradition. These are writers that have called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula home. They have explored its streets from Pacoima to, East L.A., to Commerce, to El Monte and Hollywood and Pershing Square. These writers usually write about a Los Angeles completely alien to Hollywood, the movie industry, to the famous neighborhoods like Brentwood, Bel Air, The Hollywood Hills, etc., the famous L.A. landmarks (Hollywood sign, Venice Beach, Pinks Hot Dogs, celebrity sightings, etc.) and capture the everyday of working class Latinos/as living in the Barrios. Away from depictions of cholos and cholas, gang violence and “illegals.” As the seminal anthology of contemporary Latino/a Southern California literature says: “Spanning sixty years…brings to life [a] complex and diverse group of people who are the Latino denizens of Los Angeles…young and old, gay and straight, rich and poor, the newly arrived and the well established.” The following authors speak to this breadth of experience proving they are not a monolith, stories that are often hidden in plain sight amidst the famous Los Angeles stereotypes of Hollywood, reinvention, dreams deferred, paradise etc. that proliferate around the world.
Continue reading “Latino/a Writers of Los Angeles and Southern California”
L.A. poet laureate Luis Rodriguez closing out his reign as he began: Always running
By Steve Lopez
From: Los Angeles Times
The poet laureate of Los Angeles had just taken a seat at a Pacoima cafe when he was approached by two young men.
“Excuse me, but are you Luis Rodriguez?” asked Jorge Ruiz, who was with his brother, Giovanni.
A clerk had pointed out the author of “Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.,” Rodriguez’s powerful story of how he descended into gang life and then rose out of it through a love of books. The 1993 memoir became an L.A. classic and launched a career, and the two youngsters were determined to meet the author. Continue reading “L.A. poet laureate Luis Rodriguez closing out his reign as he began: Always running”
Los Angeles Literature 