Poetry.LA is an online video showcase featuring established and emerging poets filmed at various venues throughout Southern California. It’s an up close look at a variety of poetic voices, including interviews with poets and publishers. The venues where poetry readings are held are also spotlighted to share with the poetry audience.

Poet/Artistic Director Hilda Weiss and Videographer/Producer Wayne Lindberg started Poetry.LA in January 2007 as a way to expose poets to a much larger audience beyond the intimate spaces of coffeehouses, cafes, bookstores and cultural art centers, where the readings are often taped. Poets can post the video links (uploaded to YouTube) in their emails and on websites, blogs, or social networking pages. Currently, there are more than 150 poets featured on Poetry.LA and the videos have received more than 70,000 viewings on YouTube.  

Special features of the site include: 2008-2009 U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan’s reading at the Casa Romantica Series, video interviews with Cobalt Poets’ host Rick Lupert, the Ruskin Art Club’s Literary Programs Director Elena Karina Byrne (2008 Pushcart Prize winner), Red Hen Press’ Managing Editor Kate Gale as well as hosts of The World Stage Reading Series and Redondo Poet’s Coffee Cartel readings, among others.

Hilda Weiss’ poetry has been published (or is soon to be published) in G.W. Review, Nerve Cowboy, Poem, Poet Lore, Rattle, Salamander and Westview, among other publications. She has also read her work at local venues and when attending readings found that, “I’ve often heard a good poem at a reading and wanted to listen to it again. So, Wayne and I started out videotaping open mics and it evolved from there. We now update the site typically every month with videos of a half dozen new poets reading their work. Before we tape a poet we like to read their work and look at their publication credits. Since our end product is video, we are very interested in artists who have engaging performance styles. For that reason, we keep our camera handy for strong open mic performances,” states Weiss. Weiss and Lindberg also work on Poetry.LA with their Associate Producer Michael Child, a Los Angeles-based musician and poet. They hope to establish Poetry.LA as a non-profit arts organization.

Wayne Lindberg is a Los Angeles-based writer and videographer. His short fiction collection, Cary Malone and Other Stories was published by Nothing Moments Press in 2007.

His plays have been produced by various Los Angeles theatre companies over the past 25 years, including Pacific Repertory Theatre Ensemble, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Public Works and the Venice Mooney Company.

Hilda Weiss’ business experience also includes technical writing, PR writing and photography. She is an active Kundalini yoga student and holds a 4^th degree black belt in Shotokan Karate.

Poets featured include: Anne Carson, Luis Campos, Larry Colker, Brendan Constantine, Sarah Cruse, Jawanza Dumisani, Ghetto Priest, S.A. Griffin, Juan Felipe Herrera, Gina Loring, Rick Lupert, Sarah Maclay, Mike the Poet, Holly Prado, Luis J. Rodriguez, Amy Uyematsu, and Pam Ward, among others.

Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon has provided a grant to allow Poetry Ireland to organize a poetry reading in every county. Both Irish and English poets will be featured at each event and at least three poets will read in each county. That’s mighty spectacular. The plan is to pair well-known poets with lesser known poets and performance poets too. Some of the events in Ireland on that day will include:

• Deirdre Brennan, David Butler and Derek Coyle reading in the George Bernard Shaw room at the Carlow Central Library
• John F. Deane, Rutger Kopland and Fiona Sampson will read in Dublin at the Unitarian Church; this event is sponsored by Dublin City Arts Office
• Galway City Museum will feature Celeste Auge, Louis de Paor,
  Ted Deppe, John Walsh, Michael O’Loughlin and music, with settings of poetry performed by Judith Mok and John Feeley in addition to the city and the county mayors reading their favorite poems
  In Limerick County, Michael Coady and Jo Slade and newly appointed Poet in Residence Eileen Sheehan will read at the library in Newcastle West
• The Factory Performance Space in Sligo will present Mary Branley and Eva Bourke and musician Steve Wickem

This is one of those events, like former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, that should be a must for all working poets in Ireland. I wish I lived in Ireland so that I’d have the chance to attend.

To get the full schedule with times and locations and featured poets for every county, visit Poetry Ireland’s website.

And on the lighter side of verse, mzbarbielicious – no, seriously, that’s Mz. Barbielicious (and her uno el friendo) – tells us how to write a poem “from the heart”. I just love how she uses your in place of you’re. Makes me think she’s a member of that elite group called the Language Poets.

And On The Not-So-Funny Side

The Poetry Project upcoming calendar.

Liz Henry wages war on the Republican Party.

Mark Strand does George Herbert, class of 1633.

What’s the real debate about?

Then there’s …

Ron Silliman On Sarah Palin

Ron Silliman discusses the election. He’s almost brilliant. He does, in fact, understand electoral politics and his analysis of the electoral landscape is fair and stark. But he totally misses the point on Palin’s selection as VP. It was meant to mend the broken relations between John McCain and the Religious Right. Yes, there are gender politics going on there, but the conservative religious voters who follow Pat Robertson and James Dobson needed someone to cling to because it wasn’t McCain. If he didn’t pick a strong evangelical – and by strong I don’t mean politically, I mean religiously dogmatically – then he was going to ensure that a good number of evangelical voters in key states were going to stay home on election day. As it is, they may not stay home, but I’m not sure that John McCain and the Republican operatives are aware of just how many of their evangelical base are upset with Bush and the Republican Party over the war in Iraq and lost opportunities in other areas of importance to them. They do not necessarily see Obama as their political savior, but in a land of ‘lesser of two evils’ he is looking a lot less like Lucifer than the other guy. Palin just takes one of McCain’s horns away.

I downloaded this .pdf document from Penguin Group USA that tells poets how to do Internet marketing. Haven’t read it yet. I’ve skimmed it a little and from what I’ve seen there appears to be a basic understanding of the subject, but incomplete. It’s free and I do recommend it. I’ll try to read through it more in depthly and provide some insight into the accuracy of its contents.

Robert Lee Brewer asked whether there is a market for a book on critique groups. He’s asking for feedback. I gave mine along with several others. I encourage you to drop by his blog and leave your comments, or you can leave them here on the World Class Poetry Blog and I’ll pass them along.

A book fair is coming to Decatur, Georgia.

How famous poets came to be discovered.

The Frank O’Hara Renaissance.

Bekki is looking for poets to interview.

Enjoy the Poetry Peepshow.

What to do about content thieves. I agree. I’ve done this too. And Go Daddy – yes, Go Daddy sucks.

Introducing the winner of the “Haiku in Bloom” Poetry Contest.

The first Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest.

What poetry is and isn’t.

Coming Soon: What 21st century epic poetry will look like.

Meet the fake Frank O’Hara.

Meet Ron Silliman’s clone (but don’t laugh).

Meet the new declinists.

Meet Kay Ryan’s travel agenda.

What’s going on at the National Mall in September.

The accountability of the artist.

Poetry tagged.

That’s all for now. Goodbye.

I’m always a little anxious about dealing with technology. I’m not the most technical-minded person in the world. I can figure it out if given the time, but I have to really sit and think on it. We played around with getting the S-Video to play from my PC to The Emporium’s TV screen, which the owner had set up for our presentation. That didn’t work so we went with the projector and screen as a backup. In both cases, we had trouble getting it to work. Even with a local TV station’s camera crew present, we couldn’t get the hardware to participate. I’m not sure if we were supposed to change certain settings on the display of my laptop before trying to run the video or if we were supposed to have additional hardware that we didn’t have. Had all the cables, VGA to VGA, power cords, and S-Video cord, but no dice.

I was going to play a couple of videos off of YouTube. One, below, is a video someone put together based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem titled “Ulalume” and the other, also below, is a video presentation based on “The Fall Of The House Of Usher” using Alan Parson Project’s composition as the score. Instead of using the video, because of the time crunch, I just talked about Edgar Allan Poe’s life, the death of his parents and his first wife, his estrangement from his father, his debts, and of course his mysterious death. Then I gave a dramatic reading of a few of his poems, “The Conqueror Worm”, “Dreamland”, and “The Raven.”

It went well, I’d have to say. My dramatic readings are getting better. I used to be so shy speaking in front of a group. Now I just get up and let it go. One audience member, a 13-year-old girl, was really into it, as was my five-year-old grandson, Dylan. They were both spellbound as I got into the mood of “The Raven”. Eyes fixed, sitting on the edge of their seats, those two. At least I know I can hold the interest of young people. At any rate, I had fun and I’m looking forward to August when I give a similar presentation on Edgar Allan Poe for the bookstore’s science fiction day.

And now, the videos:

Praise for Rattle’s visual poetry section.

NaPoReMo? Isn’t this really getting out of hand?

Why John Hewitt and I might have children together: Our firstborn will be named Blogging.

The rise and fall and rise of Longfellow.

Let’s hear it for the woman.

The Poe Museum in Richmond.

Is The Critic dead, or did he just say “fuck you” and leave?

At the end of this blog post you can see a video that I created myself for the poem “Siege.” It is nowhere near what I have in mind, but it’s a step (a small one) in that direction. This is a very raw production based on my limited skills, but it should give you some idea as to what I have in mind, sans the music score. All it really is is a video of an open mic poetry reading clipped to include a presentation of some photos that I took of the medieval walled fortress Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the subject of the poem. I don’t think I do it justice, but as I said, this is a start.

Dreamhouse Musical – An Off-Broadway
Poetic Experience
It has been brought to my attention that poet Barbara DeCesare’s book of poems jigsaweyesore is the basis of a new off-Broadway musical called “Dreamhouse.” The musical is a part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival and is the production of David Wolfson, who crafted the music, and Ari Laura Kreith, director. Other key people involved include:

• Musical Director/Piano: DANIEL FEYER
• Lighting Designer: JERI SYKES
• Stage Manager: LAUREN WALSH
• Publicity: SCOTTI RHODES

The musical’s cast are Suzan Postel, Maree Johnson, Jennie Eisenhower, Amy Hutchins, and Gayla D. Morgan. The musical promises to be full of wit and humor and observations on life, sex, love, and “the kind of soft sadness that never dips into maudlin theatrics” (Kessa De Santis).

The event is scheduled to run from July 21 to August 5, 2008 and will be held at The Workshop Mainstage located at 312 W. 36 St., 4th Floor, NYC. For more information you can call (212) 868-4444 or check out the website at www.smarttix.com.

Note: This information came to me via e-mail and I can’t vouch for its accuracy. I consider the source a credible source, but the website above currently doesn’t have any information on this event and I have another website address for the musical itself that currently doesn’t appear to be live. I will try to get more information on the event. It does look like one worthy of attendance.

Siege – Poetry Video
And now, without further ado, I bring you “Siege,” the video:

Correction: Dreamhouse Musical was a 2005 production. In the original e-mail I received on this production, I didn’t notice the year and have recently found out that the sender sent it to me as an FYI and not necessarily as a promotional release. Now that I know more about this, I wish I had seen it.

An Ode To Alexander Hamilton

We all get what we deserve one way or another,
But you, you bastard, weren’t worth the bother;
Your Mercantile philosophy
Was a tasteless recipe
That became the Master Plan
For this Leviathan.
It all just makes me wonder,
Why separate ourselves from that asshole over yonder?

The NaPoWriMo Blues
I’d love to participate in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), but I don’t like to publish my own poems on this blog. I certainly wouldn’t want to do it every day for a month (besides, I’m currently working on another project that I don’t want to abandon until it is finished – and it is almost finished!) What I may do instead (and I won’t decide for sure until probably tonight or tomorrow) is post a religious poem from the past or present every day for the month of April.

So why religious poems? Well, for starters, religious poetry doesn’t get much mention in this culture any more. And secondly, I am hosting a tribute to religious poetry on April 13 in Enola, Pa. at St. Michael’s Reformed Episcopal Church. The featured poet is Carol Clark Williams, the poet laureate of York, Pa. I figured it might be good to make my blogging efforts coincide with that. I have some ideas regarding that.

If you’d like to see a tribute to religious poetry then I encourage you to make recommendations about poems you’d like to see me post or you can submit your own. If I like your religious poem (and it can be any religion) then I’ll post it on this blog in the Month of April, the cruelest month. To submit your poem, leave a comment on this or any other blog post with your poem included. If I like the poem I’ll copy and paste it as a blog post; if I don’t I’ll just delete it.

As for me, I’m planning a tribute to religious poetry open mic reading in Enola, Pa. on April 13. Carol Clark Williams, poet laureate of York, Pa. will be the featured poet. The event begins at 6 p.m. at St. Michael’s Reformed Episcopal Church.

And the funniest line in the news this week is …

Poetry, huh, yeah, what is it good for?

Washington Post. What’s it good for?