Join us for an evening of poetry, performance, and dance. Poet Cecilia Woloch and Roma performers Cristo Osorio (from Spain) and Bogumiła Delimata (from Poland) present an evening of passion and enchantment; combining spoken word, imagery, music, dance, and theater in the Gypsy spirit of duende.   Doors Open: 7:00 PM, Performances: 7:30 PM   Following the performances join us for an outdoors afterparty in the Poets’ Garden.     About the performers:   Cecilia Woloch is a poet, writer, and performer based in Los Angeles. She has published six collections of poems, most recently an expanded and updated edition of Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem. Her honors include fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Center for International Theatre Development. She collaborates regularly with musicians, dancers, visual artists and theatre artists around the world.   Bogumila Delimata, born in Wroclaw, Poland of pure gypsy heritage. World renowned Impressionist Romani Painter combining feminist art with Romani roots, Romani and Flamenco dancer. Renowned actress both in film and theatre in her native Poland with musical and dance performances throughout Europe and the Americas.   Cristobal Osorio, born in Barcelona, Spain. Captivating singer and guitarist steeped in Read More ...

A Generative Workshop with Jose Hernandez DiazThis exciting generative poetry workshop will begin with close readings and discussions of established masters of the surreal and strange like James Tate, Marosa di Giorgio, Shivani Mehta, Will Alexander, and others--as well as engage attendees with surreal and strange prompts in an effort to write their own innovative work. The instructor will also share some of his own work responding to the prompts for guidance and inspiration. Participants should expect to draft 2-5 poems in this workshop.About the facilitatorJose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), and The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025). He teaches generative workshops for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, The Writer's Center, and elsewhere. Additionally, he serves as a Poetry Mentor in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.Masks are encouraged while inside our center.One scholarship will be awarded to a QTPOC/BIPOC L.A.-residing individual who would like to join but does not have the means to do so. Please email us if interested at info@beyondbaroque.org.Workshop attendees are expected to participate in a respectful, constructive, and considerate manner. Beyond Baroque reserves the Read More ...

Celebrate new collections by ire’ne lara silva and Angelina SáenzBeyond Baroque is proud to present a dual book launch and reading by Chicana poets ire’ne lara silva and Angelina Sáenz in celebration of their new poetry collections! The fifth collection by 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate ire’ne silva, the eaters of flowers (Saddle Road Press), compiles poems exploring family and personal grief following the death of her brother. The second collection by Angelina Sáenz, Maestra (FlowerSong Press), navigates the current public school landscape through poems highlighting narratives of mentors, students, and working class parents of color.The poets will be joined by Chicana poet and scholar Jen Yáñez-Alaniz, whose research focuses on academic decolonization, and Inglewood-born-and-raised poet féi hernandez, author of Hood Criatura. Book signings will follow the readings.Doors Open: 6:30 PM Readings: 7:00 PMAbout the authorsire’ne lara silva is the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate and the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers; two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos; and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, the 2021 Texas Institute of Read More ...

Celebrate new work by Mathieu CaillerJoin us for a reading in celebration of Mathieu Cailler’s new short story collection Forest for the Trees & Other Stories, winner of the 2023 Paris Book Festival. Poet & Memoirist Shonda Buchanan, and fiction author Laura Warrell will be reading new and selected work.In Forest for the Trees & Other Stories, Mathieu Cailler delivers a diverse collection of fifteen shorts that perfectly captures characters steeped in their own troubles. With clear and pointed prose, Cailler creates a conduit through which readers experience the characters’ sufferings, losses, revelations, their moments of connection, and their snippets of happiness. The author’s experimentation with voice and point of view makes this collection honest and accessible, allowing readers to feel true compassion by better understanding others and the imperfect world we all inhabit.“Using bright prose and a heartfelt, empathetic eye, Mathieu Cailler enters the shadows of everyday relationships to reveal the desperate love and clinging lies that his complex characters offer each other to survive. Forest for the Trees is a story collection for a time in which so many souls hunger for connection. A tremendous read.”—Sophfronia Scott, author of Wild, Beautiful, and Free and The Seeker and the Read More ...

Readings of poetry highlighting the mystical and transformative power of queer transdisciplinary poeticsBeyond Baroque presents an immersive gathering exploring the intersection of queer identities, the avant-garde, and mystical practices. The program will feature a mix of poetry, prose, & performance by Shelley Marlow, Brooke Palmieri, Noel Alumit and K. Bradford. After the performances, the authors will be in conversation moderated by poet and scholar, Ramón García.Doors open: 6:30 PM Readings: 7:00 PMShelley Marlow is a writer and visual artist whose work explores queer joy, and practical and ritual magic. In 2015, Marlow’s novel Two Augusts In a Row In a Row, was published by Publication Studio, Portland; with art editions by Publication Studio, Hudson, NY and Publication Studio, London(2017). Marlow received an Acker Award for avant-garde writing, (2017). Halloween in Edinburgh, from their new manuscript, The Wind Blew Through Like A Chorus Of Ghosts was published in Belladonna* Collective’s Lesbian All Stars series(2022). Recent artwork and writing appear in the Brooklyn Rail; Hyperallergic; Lambda Literary; Evergreen Review; Altered Bodies catalogue; and The St. Petersburg Review. Marlow has read and exhibited their work extensively. Marlow edited prose for Ping Pong Magazine, out of the Henry Miller Library. Marlow ran writing workshops Read More ...

2021-22 Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Lynne Thompson, in conversation with Pam Ward.Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods. The documentation of these personal odysseys—which vary stylistically from abecedarians to free verse to centos—replicate the many ways women travel through the stages of their lives, all negotiated on a palette encompassing various shades of blue. These poems demand your attention, your voice: “Say history. Claim. Say wild.” The author will be joined by Pam Ward for a reading and conversation in The Wanda Coleman Theater. Reception & book signings to follow after the readings.“Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette is at turns—and, often, all at once—old and new. That is, rooted strong in a long tradition and legitimately experimental. Thompson’s range in form and subject matter is equaled only by the deftness with which she handles each. In these pages we get a true blue blueswoman who knows when to whisper and when to wail, one who has lived some, and means to make song of what she’s seen.”— John Murillo, author of Read More ...

Join us for a night with author J. Ryan Stradal, Alison Turner, and Lou Mathews reading their fiction and poetry.New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal delivers a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club is a window into a colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds; J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.The author will be reading alongside L.A.’s literary couple Alison Turner (author of The Second Split Between) and Lou Mathews (author of Shaky Town and L.A. Breakdown). Book signings to follow the readings.Doors Open: 7:30 PM I Readings: 8:00 PMJ. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which won the American Booksellers Association Indie's Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, and the Midwest Read More ...

Join us for an evening of powerful poetry with Dorianne Laux, Michelle Bitting, & Dion O'Reilly!Authors Dion O'Reilly (Sadness of the Apex Predator), Dorianne Laux (Life On Earth), and Michelle Bitting (Dummy Ventriloquist) are celebrating newly published collections and will be reading from their latest books at Beyond Baroque. Enjoy a reception and book signings after the program.Doors Open: 6:30 PM I Readings: 7:00 PMAbout the authorsDorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Her latest collection is Life On Earth and will be released in January of 2024.Dion O'Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Read More ...

The fourth installment of Skulls and Stairs at Beyond Baroque. Featuring poets reading at the staircase.Beyond Baroque presents Skulls & Stairs a reading series showcasing poets beyond text dwelling on the goth and the illuminating void. This Halloween special features performances in the staircase by poets Adam Stutz, celebrating two new books out from Whit Stag Press, Sham Tapestry & COMPUNCTIONS + THEFTS; Beyond Baroque bookstore favorite and former Ventura County Youth Poet Laureate, Genesis Perez, and wicked BB intern, USC-undergrad Nicholas Wilder Forman. The evening will feature a synthful set of archestral anarchy by The Martian Sunset keyboardist Ryan Madariaga, aka Celestial Cyclops. Dress up in your favorite spooky ghoul or dead author. All customes encouraged!doors open: 7:00 pm, readings: 7:30 pmAbout the authorsAdam Stutz is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Broken Lens Journal, co-host of the Broken Lens Podcast, and a neurodivergent poet. He is the author of Transcript (Cooper Dillon Books, 2017), The Scales (White Stag Publishing, 2018), The Sham Tapestry (White Stag Publishing, 2024), and Compunctions + Thefts (White Stag Publishing, 2024). His work has appeared in various print and online publications including The Equalizer: Second Series, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Prelude, Be About It, Read More ...

Join us for a thrilling multimedia production combining DADA, religion, late stage capitalism, and more!Based on anthologized material and using tongue twisting rhyming verse in the DADA tradition, Christian Georgescu's multimedia production House of The Highest and Most Pious (HOTHAMP) depicts a prosperity preacher's search for meaning as he contends with modern life amid late stage Capitalism. Featuring LA's premier spoken word artists S.A. Griffin, Rich Ferguson, Kathleen Florence, and Nicholas Garcia, HOTHAMP meets at the intersection of literature, circus, stadium event and church service. "An exceptionally crafted inside joke. Humor at its best: first disarming the reader with charm and wit, then hitting hard with truth that alters perception." The Pedestal Magazine.Doors Open: 1:30 PM Readings: 2:00 PMAbout the authorsAward-winning designer, writer and performer, Christian Georgescu has appeared in Poetry Brothel and The Moth. His previous solo shows Meisner with Mama, iLucifer and House of ME have premiered at United Solo NYC and Hollywood Fringe. His written works are anthologized in It's Animal But Merciful (Great Weather for Media) and Seflie (NYSAI Press) among others. His current multi-media theater production House of The Highest and Most Pious (HOTHAMP) is a culmination of material published over the years in the Read More ...

Join us for a night of work from Weijia Pan, Dare Williams & Sara Ellen Fowler.Chosen by Louise Glück for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Motherlands, by Weijia Pan, is an engrossing debut that interrogates history, identity, and the power of poetry to elucidate both.Motherlands opens with a child drawn early to poetry. “In summer I write. Two lines at a time, two vying souls / running up the wall.” The collection follows this speaker-poet through a childhood in post-Maoist China and an eventual move to the United States, laying bare cultural and linguistic tensions in both historical and modern settings. He cites Chinese laborers toiling in American factories—an echo of the brutalities endured by those who constructed the Transatlantic Railroad—and speaks to anxieties around belonging, assimilation, and identity.In these attentive, imaginative poems, Weijia Pan questions the artist’s duty—his duty—as a chronicler of truth, especially through issues of displacement and global injustice. What can the poet do but observe? And yet, in unpacking ancestral traumas connected to Maoist China and modern-day bigotry exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, he still finds himself turning to art as a way to understand both the self and the world at large. Through elegant juxtapositions, Read More ...

A celebration of poetry collections released within the last yearAuthors Nancy Miller Gomez (Inconsolable Objects), Lynne V.E. Crawford (Washing Water), and Lynne Thompson (Blue on a Blue Palette) are celebrating newly published collections and will be reading from their latest books at Beyond Baroque. Enjoy a reception and book signings after the program.Doors Open 7:30 PM I Readings 8:00 PMAbout the authorsNancy Miller Gomez is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books) and Punishment(Rattle chapbook series). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, Lit Hub, The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, The Rumpus, Rattle, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She co-founded an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Prisons, Jails, and the Juvenile Hall. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. More at: nancymillergomez.com.Lynda V. E. Crawford is a poet, born and raised in Barbados. She has lived on both coasts of the US (Connecticut and California). A Pushcart Prize nominee (2022, 2024), her work has appeared in national and international online and print journals including Prairie Schooner, ArtsEtc Barbados, The Caribbean Writer, The Galway Review, Read More ...

An IRL reading of Mobile Data Mag online literary journal available exclusively on SubstackMobile Data Mag is a digital literary journal exclusively on Substack housing a collection of poetry and prose, particularly from authors who are born and raised in California. Authors whose submitted work is at 500 characters or less are posted onto Systemic Dreaming, an extension of Mobile Data Mag and online journal exclusively on Threads social media platform.Hosted by founding editor and author Jesse Tovar, this IRL reading features five poets from all corners of Los Angeles County: Pam Concepcion, Daryl Gussin, Jennifer “Miss B’ Baptiste, Mauricio “Soul on Fire” Moreno, and Laura Sermeño.Following the readings in The Wanda Coleman Theater join us for book signing and a reception with light refreshments.Doors Open: 1:30 PM I Readings: 2:00 PMAbout the authorsPam Concepcion is a multimedia artist: a poet, an aspiring screenwriter, a digital collage artist, and a video editor. She is born and raised in Metro Manila, Philippines, where she played softball, wrote poetry, and earned her Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering with a minor in New Media and Communication. In 2023, she moved to South Pasadena, California, to live with her family. Since then, she has Read More ...

Join us for the Los Angeles Book Launch of Kim Dower's book "What She Wants"Following the commercial and literary success of her bestselling poetry collection, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom: Poems on Motherhood, Kim Dower delivers What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair, Euphoria—turning her keen eye, vibrant imagination, trademark insight, and humor to the intensity of obsessive love. These steamy and provocative poems, combining humor and heartache, run through the four phases of Limerence, the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person: Infatuation, Crystallization, Deterioration, and Ecstatic Release. From the opening poem, “She’ll do anything for food,” to the sexy title poem, “What She Wants,” the painfully funny, “His Other Girlfriend,” to the longing in “Visiting Baudelaire,” and the sad, sweet final poem, “Fish’s Lament,” Kim Dower captures the essence of what it means to be stuck on someone—even on a squirrel! Her eclectic, growing readership will savor these poems that can be read in one sitting, like a story with an arc, or separately, each one recalling the moment of falling in or out of love, the moment our hearts skipped a beat.The author will be joined in a reading and conversation Read More ...