Two major themes this month at the LA Books Examiner are National Poetry Month and the LA Times Festival of Books, both of which collide this weekend for two full days of poetry reading events that you truly can’t find anywhere else.
On Saturday, April 24th, for instance, 15 very different poets each read from their respective work for about 20-25 minutes from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. That means every half hour you could watch a different poet reading his or her work throughout the day…for free…without tickets and without reservations!
In between various book panels (of which there were some 45 throughout the day), the LA Books Examiner sat in on 7 of these poetry readings (see slideshow), including actress and poet Amber Tamblyn; California’s Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes; LA Times Book Prize Finalist Tom Healy; National Book Award Finalist Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon; California legend Wanda Coleman; LA Times Book Prize Winner Brenda Hillman; and Candace Pearson, the Liam Rector First Book Prize Winner for Poetry.
If you plan to attend the Book Festival today on the campus of UCLA, be sure to download the LATFOB map and stop by the LA Times Poetry Stage just north of the inverted fountain near the Schoenberg Music Building. Here is a list of Sunday's performers:
Poetry Stage
10:00 AM Get Lit Players, Classical Teen Poetry Troupe
10:30 AM Ching-In Chen reads from The Heart’s Traffic
11:00 AM Beth Bachmann reads from Temper
11:30 AM Lytton Smith reads from All-Purpose Magical Tent
12:00 PM Molly Bendall reads from Under the Quick
12:30 PM Tony & Willis Barnstone reading from Tongue of War and Restored New Testament
1:00 PM Poets of What Books Press: Gail Wronsky, Karen Kevorkian, Alicia Partnoy, Ramon Garcia read from their works
1:30 PM B.H. Fairchild reads from Usher: Poems
2:00 PM Jan Beatty reads from Red Sugar
2:30 PM Ira Sadoff reads from Barter
3:00 PM Cathy Colman reads from Beauty’s Tattoo
3:30 PM Annie Finch reads from Among the Goddesses
4:00 PM Patty Seyburn reads from Hilarity
4:30 PM Collages & Collisions: A Braided Reading including: Molly Bendall, Sarah Maclay, Holaday Mason, Louise Mathias & Gail Wronsky
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