ORGANIZER: Jessica Wilson
CONTACT: venicesoapboxpoets@gmail.com
  

      

We are happy to announce year #4 for 100 Thousand Poets for Change! Our efforts in solidarity have become successful as we’ve joined hands with allies and friends from all over the planet! This planet has gotten smaller, and it has been proven that we can make change happen!

This year, we partner with our friends at Beyond Baroque — a hub and monument to Literary Arts in beautiful Venice, CA. Beyond Baroque is a historic icon of the city — the living breathing legacy of the Beat Poets of Venice West, a place for social justice and LOVE! (Weddings have happened in this very spot). Each year, Beyond Baroque is the headquarters for 100TPC LA! We’re honored to have this partnership.

Our programming this year is designed to bring the people and the organizations, non-profits, change doers, together! Many of the features are agents of ACTION — they don’t just celebrate and talk change…they actively make it happen.

What is Change all about?
It’s a broad term…change. Everything can be changed… but we all care about different things. So how can we come together? Well, we come together under the principle that CHANGE NEEDS TO HAPPEN — we can reflect this on the Global level, economic, city, street, within the home… domestic… there are a lot of needs. That is why it takes ALL OF US to push the change forward. In solidarity, we support each others’ cause…we cry for each others’ battles, and work together to make change come true. Nudging even just a little bit further can get you such a positive result. Efforts are never in vain.

~ thoughts from Jessica M. Wilson, Los Angeles Poet Society Founder/Poet/President

The movement began with Poets…and here we all are…AGENTS of CHANGE!

 

100 Thousand Poets for Change – Los Angeles – Beyond Baroque – Programming

This year we are featuring 8 segments that support CHANGE SEEKERS and CHANGE DOERS! We’re making this a festival to include our features, along with the organizations they represent and work with, plus open mic throughout the show!

We aim to connect you with the organizations and groups that are involved in making change everyday… this is to help you carry on with your work to change your world!

The change momentum will carry BEYOND Sept. 27th, CHANGE IS EVERY DAY!

We will be streaming LIVE the day of the event – ustream.tv/channel/the-poet-s-soapbox

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

In the Mike Kelley Gallery (upstairs): 

2 – 2:30pm –  the Los Angeles chapter of the Socialist Party USA presents a Q & A on Socialism for Today

2:30-3pm –  the IWW presents a talk on Solidarity Unionism

8-9pm – MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN, JAN BEATTY & WILLIAM HARRY HARDING Join poets MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN, JAN BEATTY & WILLIAM HARRY HARDING as they honor the great Wanda Coleman with poems of wild risk and tribute.

 

In the Scott Wannberg Bookstore:

8-10pm – The Revolutionary Poets Brigade – Los Angeles
Information session and reading from the RPB Poets
Hosted by Mark Lipman

Tables in the lobby from 2-6pm:
Occupy Venice

the IWW
the SPUSA – Socialist Party – Los Angeles Chapter – USA

In the Beyond Baroque Theater:

ALL EVENT LONG: Open Mic for the People!
There will be an open mic during each segment. Come early and let us know what time block you’d like to read in.

3-4pm – Women of Change, produced by Los Angeles Poet Society/ hosted by Jessica Wilson Cardenas, featuring Amy Uyematsu, Gloria Enedina Alvarez, and Iris De Anda

Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1528873464010041/

4-5pm – Men of Change, produced by Los Angeles Poet Society / hosted Jessica Wilson Cardenas, featuring Julio Rodriguez Julio Rodriguez, Conga Poet, Stosh Machek, Jeffery Martin, Juan Cardenas
Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/674836949273547/

5-6pm – Youth Open Mic hosted by Mason Summit Allport

6-7pm  – Enjoy the Bookstore, Network, Learn and Teach 

7-8pm – The L.A. Women of Punk Hostage Press / hosted by Iris Berry
featuring: CARLYE ARCHIBEQUE, IRIS BERRY, JESSICA WILSON CARDENAS, PLEASANT GEHMAN,
SUSAN HAYDEN, YVONNE DE LA VEGA

 

8-10pm – (in the theater) TIMOTHY STEELE, CATHERINE CHANDLER and KEVIN DURKIN / hosted by CHARLOTTE INNES.

In the Mike Kelley Gallery (upstairs): MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN, JAN BEATTY & WILLIAM HARRY HARDING Join poets MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN, JAN BEATTY & WILLIAM HARRY HARDING as they honor the great Wanda Coleman with poems of wild risk and tribute. 

10-11pm — La Poesia Festival — a Bilingual Mic, hosted by Antonieta Villamil

On Poets

A poet carries the unseen seed for a long time.

A poet is both mother and father.

Collecting bones, leaves, and names with equal

anticipation, a poet is most amazed by the gift

of countless moments of amazement.

A poet walks on a tightrope of syllables.

A poet keeps writing no matter how dangerous.

An advocate for the ordinary, a poet can be

no less than revolutionary.

Feared most by tyrants, a poet cannot hide.

A poet begins with nothing and ends with every-

thing, over and over again.

A poet inhabits the crowded country of dream

and desire, improvising her small portion

of words like a jazz musician.

A poet sings because it’s the only way

she knows how.

A poet keeps giving birth to herself.

~ Amy Uyematsu (c)2014

 

About our Agents of Change! ~~ Feature Bios ~~

TIMOTHY STEELE is the author of four collections of poems: Uncertainties and Rest (1979), Sapphics against Anger and Other Poems (1986), The Color Wheel (1994), and Toward the Winter Solstice (2006). The first two were reprinted in 1995 as a joint volume, Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986. Currently, he says, he is “two-thirds of the way to another collection of poems.”

CATHERINE CHANDLER has just published a second full-length collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons with Biblioasis Press, Windsor, Ontario, 2014. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Lines of Flight (Able Muse Press, 2011) was shortlisted for the 2013 Poets’ Prize. A collection of sonnets, This Sweet Order, was published by White Violet Press in 2012. Richard Wilbur says that Chandler’s poems “offer the reader a plain eloquence, a keen eye, and a graceful development of thought.”

KEVIN DURKIN’s first collection of poetry, Los Angeles in Fog, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. Durkin’s poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, American Arts Quarterly, The New Criterion, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and have been anthologized in Poetry Daily, Irresistible Sonnets, and Able Muse Anthology.

Juan Cardenas – Los Angeles Poet Society, Vice President and Bilingual Educator with California Poets in the Schools (www.cpits.org)

Gloria E. Alvarez

 Amy Uyematsu

Carlye Archibeque

Carlye Archibeque is the director of publicity and special events at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, California, a poet, and a journalist. A Los Angeles native, she writes in the confessional vein. Her poetry has been published in the collections Social Anarchism, News Clips and Ego Trips and others. Her interview with graphic artist Dan Clowes was reprinted in both the English and French volumes of Dan Clowes: Conversations. She is currently working on a series of autobiographical prose poems titled “And Then the Acid Kicked In,” to be published by Punk Hostage Press in May, 2015.

Jeffery Martin at Tia Chucha’s Cultural, Sylmar, CA

Stosh Machek reading at Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA.

Jessica M. Wilson – Agent of Change, Los Angeles!

 

Change Statements from our Change Agents

The Los Angeles Poet Society has asked the same 5 questions to our Change Agents …

• What have you done (for change)?
• Why are you doing it?
• Who have you worked with in your efforts for change?
• What have been the results?
• Who are you looking for to join you/ ally with/ how can people help you with your journey?

here’s what they had to say:

Profile on Stosh Machek

1)  speak out & agitate to some degree

…but the most relevant thing is to BE thechange, & share it
…talk it & walk it
…be the disruption you want to see happen

2)  because times are tough & too many people are hungry & too many people are spoiled,
& things give every indication that theyre gonna get worse,
& we’re all gonna need each other when they do

3)  the rest of the type of people that show up for rallies against police brutality, or the rights of the homeless, or overturning citizens united, or anti-big media, or bad supreme court decisions
…mondayNight mission in downTown L.A. puts on some street actions, they also feed the homeless downtown
…but a lot of time it’s the hive mind, Anonymous, because most of these things are organized online & social media
…i’m also involved w/ a group called ‘jail guitar doors’, & we go into the twin towers county jail downtown & hold songwriting workshops w/ the inmates

4)  the results of the JGD group are amazing  …people in our classes feel human again for a couple of hours at a time  …they make music; it’s beautiful
…as far as the rallies & the poetry, i know that if you make enough noise, or the right kind of noise the right way, you will sow some seeds, you will kick open some doors  …if i’m at a street rally & 20,000 people see us, either looking out their windows or passing by in their cars, looking at the people holding signs & trying to communicate, well most of those people wont pay attention, but some of those people will think about it hard, & some of them might have a change of mind, or at least learn something new, the existence of a viewpoint other than their own
5)  i’m looking for everybody to join me
…be the disruption you want see happen

 

Profile on Iris De Anda

1. I take an active role in creating change in my community. I work with Eastside Cafe an all volunteer run autonomous collective which provides classes and events for our community including a monthly open mic geared towards the youth . I co-opened up a small healing arts center called Here and Now in my community this year to bring forth classes, workshops, and a space for anything that supports mind, body, and soul

2. I’m doing this to be the change I wish to see in the world but most importantly to see the change happening locally for my own children.

3. I also work with Poets Responding to SB1070 (poetry of resistance) to create a platform where we can address issues of racism and xenophobia. I work with 100,000 poets for change to bring forth events in the Eastside of Los Angeles.

New Facebook /Social Media photo effort in solidarity will all indigenous women!
Feel free to right click and save and add to your profiles.

About Beyond Baroque:

BEYOND BAROQUE is one of the United States’ leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public’s knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California.

The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings, workshops, new music and education. The building also houses a bookstore with the largest collection of new poetry books and CDs for sale and an archive that houses over 40,000 books, including small press and limited-edition publications, chronicling the history of poetry movements in Los Angeles and beyond.

Through the years, Beyond Baroque has played muse to the Venice Beats, the burgeoning Punk movement and visiting scholars. Many of the city’s leading literary talents, including Dennis Cooper, Wanda Coleman, Tom Waits, Exene Cervenkova and Amy Gerstler, are alumni of the Wednesday night poetry workshop. Many of the worlds most well known independent artists, including Patti Smith, Michael McClure, Dana Gioia, and Viggo Mortensen have performed on its stage.

Founded in 1968
BEYOND BAROQUE
Venice, CA 90291

BEYOND BAROQUE’S MISSION Beyond Baroque’s mission is to advance the public awareness of and involvement in the literary arts; to provide a challenging program of events which promotes new work and diversity; to foster a place in the community for the exchange of challenging ideas and the nurturing of new work; to support writers through readings, workshops, books sales, publication, access to archived material and performance space; to encourage collaboration and cross-fertilization between writers and artists in multiple disciplines with the goal of producing mixed media art; to use the literary arts as a foundation for increasing education and literacy in our community.