Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center is based near the beach in Los Angeles’ old Venice City Hall, built 1906. The Center offers an extensive program of public readings, free workshops, a project room, bookstore, publications, and chapbook/small press archive. During our nearly forty years in Venice, we have nurtured and presented many of the best writers, artists, and poets from the West Coast, around the country, and world. The Center is unique for its combined range of activities, constantly moving back and forth between the underground and the literary and artistic establishments.
In a town focused on Hollywood and the music industry, Beyond Baroque has charted an independent, non-commercial path, emphasizing the live experience of challenging art and poetry in an intimate, focused atmosphere. We pride ourselves on enabling poets and artists to envision and present their work outside usual social hierarchies, in an egalitarian and welcoming atmosphere. The Center, continually reinventing itself, has provided a home and incubator for countless styles and approaches, based on its founding spirit from the free-form late 1960s. Many now-famous writers read with us early; others have received celebrations by the community gathering in appreciation of a life’s work. The Center’s peer-based workshop program, where writers of all kinds can gather year round, week after week, for free, is unique not only on the West coast but nationally.
Begun in 1968 with a newsprint ‘zine titled BEYOND BAROQUE, printed and distributed free in an edition of 20,000 by George Drury Smith, Beyond Baroque started as a meeting place, with workshops and space for readings, art, and music. The workshops, over the years, have generated numerous writers, presses, and some of the leading poets in Los Angeles. The facilitators have included founders Joe Hansen and John Harris, Leland Hickman, Bob Flanagan, John Thomas, Will Alexander, Jeff McDaniel, Philomene Long, Simone Forti, Sarah Maclay, Liz Gonzales, and others. The Center’s first librarian was Exene Cervenka of the band X, which was formed when Exene and John Doe met at the Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop. Some of world famous LA artist Mike Kelley’s first performances were at the Center, and the cover of one of the Center’s early issues of BEYOND BAROQUE, featuring an array of experimental filmmakers, was displayed in the Pompidou’s 2006 show on LA art. The Center archives chapbooks, small press poetry and experimental fiction and sells them (an index of our chapbook archive is online). Our reading series, featuring over 200 writers a year, has included Christopher Isherwood, Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Carver, John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Philip Levine, Ed Dorn, Wanda Coleman, CK Williams, Lewis MacAdams, James Tate, Alice Notley, Patti Smith and thousands of others both famous and infamous. Center series include experimental music, film screenings, and visual art. The Center has facilitated or organized festivals, including the citywide World Beyond Festivals, with the World Stage and other LA organizations, and the Beyond Text Festivals, with LACMA and others. Its yearly event with the LA Poetry Festival, the Younger Poets, has consistently presented the best emerging voices from around the LA region at the Downtown Central Library. In addition to on-site work, the Center has curated and organized permanent public art projects highlighting Los Angeles poets, including the Poetry Walls on the Venice Boardwalk and the lobby of the Junipero Serra State Office Building downtown.
Publications that have come out of the Center, some originally through its typesetting facilities, include Momentum Press, edited by Bill Mohr, Little Caesar edited by programs curator Dennis Cooper, a series edited by David Trinidad, the magazine FOREHEAD edited by Benjamin Weissman, also a readings curator, and more. The Center’s imprint was launched in 1998 by Fred Dewey and has published fourteen books, including works by April Durham, Olive Martin, Eve Wood, Majid Naficy, Philomene Long, Nancy Agabian, Simone Forti, K. Curtis Lyle, Benjamin Hollander, and Ammiel Alcalay, along with anthologies from both the Wednesday Workshop, the World Stage, and several magazines featuring challenging writing and art from around the country and the world, including the recent TRUTH ETC, with works by Jean-Luc Godard, Wanda Coleman, Jack Hirschman, Christoph Dreager, Diane di Prima, David Meltzer, Sesshu Foster, Ammiel Alcalay, Yan Li, and more.
The Center’s staff and board have historically included writers and artists, from the Center’s founding by Smith, an experimental fiction writer, in 1968, through key programming figures including Manazar Gamboa, Dennis Cooper, Dennis Philips, Amy Gerstler, Benjamin Weissman, and the current director, Fred Dewey.
Beyond Baroque is located at 681 Venice Blvd., in Venice, CA, 90291. Our bookstore and archive are open Fridays and around events.
You can find us on the web at beyondbaroque.org
