In case you don’t know, Long Beach has a poetry festival. Beside the City of Angels: A Long Beach Poetry Festival is taking place on Saturday, October 13, at The Liberty Art Gallery, which was launched last year by Paige Bauer. The festival is an all-day affair, starting at 11AM and ending at 8:30PM.
This free event is paid for, in part, by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, but organizers are also hosting an evening of readings by the event’s organizers, all heavy hitters in the world of poetry, to help defray the costs. This pre-event event is taking place this Saturday, September 22, from 7PM to 9PM at Gatsby Books, and will feature Donna Hilbert, Anna Badua, Tamara Madison, Clint Margrave, Paul Kareem Tayyar and Kevin Lee. A $10 donation is requested, but none will be turned away.
In addition to running Aortic Books, publishing the poetry magazine Re)verb for the last 10 years, and hosting the monthly Hump Readings at Gatsby every third Wednesday, Lee was also the originator of the poetry festival concept, which began to develop in 2010. With so much great poetry going on in Long Beach, why, he asked, was there not a poetry festival?
“We started having meetings about what the festival would look like, who would we invite to read, who would we feature, where would we have it. All that good stuff. In October 2011 we had our first festival.
“It was amazing. And I mean it. It was a big day for poetry. All day, and attendance was great. A couple hundred people were in and out throughout the day. That is big for a local poetry event. There were some people that stayed all day long. We are talking about 12 hours. After the success of last year, it was a no-brainer to do it again.”
Last year, the event was held in what was then the 2nd City Council Art Gallery. Since then, the space changed hands, and it is now called The Liberty Gallery.
“We loved the space last year and it was perfect for an event like this. There is a great indoor space as well as an outdoor space, just in case people need to step out. Also, having visual arts up during a poetry reading is a perfect pairing. A lot of writers actually write poems about specific art pieces, so everything kind of ties in.”
This year’s line up of poets is all new and includes both emerging and well established writers.
“We are so fortunate in Long Beach to have a long list of talented writers. Mix that up with more talent from neighboring cities and counties, as well as from states across the country, and there are plenty of poets to draw from.”
The festival is intended to be inclusive and welcoming to a diverse audience. Lee said that the key to connecting to a diverse audience is having a diverse group of poets.
“It’s a diverse group that speaks to diverse people, and this really helps. What also helps is that there are a lot of students that attend these events, from CSULB and LBCC mainly, and these are the next generation coming up. They are passionate, and will be the ones that keep all this alive and booming. There seems to be a great respect that goes on among the generations of poets here in Long Beach, and that also helps build the community and interest.
“Also, we do fundraisers, and pull money out of our own pockets, to keep it free. This helps because it allows anyone to come out to an artistic event, regardless of the money in their pocket. Last year, we had people just passing by the event going to wherever – the V Room or Roscoe’s, MOLAA – and they stopped in and listened and just enjoyed a new experience. We need that.
“The perception that most people have about poetry was learned in high school, and that’s fine. They learned some of the greats, but the poetry written today is way different, especially in Long Beach. It’s accessible! It is written for the average Joe, the normal guy or girl walking down the streets of Long Beach, going into dive bars or visiting a gallery, or someone who lost their job or is coming up in their career. Everyone. People can relate to the poetry that will be at the festival.
“I read poetry from the small presses all the time, especially from locals, and there is poetry about just every normal thing in our lives. I’ve written two poems about my baby boy pooping! But really, the people writing today know how to write. They know the language. They have read the greats, but they can speak to just about anyone.”
With 20 poets scheduled to read at the festival, Lee confessed to being excited most by the participation of Wanda Coleman, who will close the event with an hour long reading, starting at 7:30PM. Coleman has had a celebrated career spanning five decades, and has been hailed as the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles.
“She is amazing, a literary genius if you will, and she just won the 2012 Shelley Memorial Award. That’s a huge national honor. I’m sure she’s really busy these days, but she’s taking the time to read for us at the festival. This is someone who was born in Watts, and I’m sure had many experiences in her life that inspired her to write. Just about anyone in the poetry community, near and far, knows her and adores her work.”
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Learn more about the fundraising event.
For information about the poetry festival, visit the facebook page.
For more information about Gatsby Books, including its 3rd Wednesdays Hump Readings, visit GatsbyBooks.com.
To find out about upcoming events at Liberty, visit TheLibertyGallery.com.