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Over the next few weeks you’ll see a mix of voices and aesthetics. You’ll witness the kind of exuberant and rigorous curiosity that exemplifies the work of these poets and the work we do here at Los Angeles Review of Books. I wanted to put together a roster of writers that helps put to rest the notion that there’s one kind of poetry being written by one kind of poet — our own Olympic team of sorts. The diversity of this group of poets is indicative of the world we live in and are committed to writing about in the poetry section at LARB. The Best American Poetry will be featuring our pieces on their site, and we hope to hear your voice from the crowd, too. Feel free to comment — join in and tell us how your Games are going.

Poet/Editor Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Los Angeles Review of Books have rounded up a slew of poets to wax poetic about this year’s Summer Olympics. I will be thinking and writing and thinking about the sport of Weightlifting.

9 months ago -

2

From the Other Coast

lareviewofbooks:

LYTTON SMITH

on British poetry and riot.
Riots on the streets of Tottenham CC Nico Hogg

This is the first installment of a recurring series titled From The Other Coast. In this series writers from other English speaking countries will be looking at the work of contemporary poets they admire whose work may be unknown to an American audience. When I’m abroad I’m consistently struck by the sheer volume of poetry written in English that never makes it to an American audience. Go to Foyles or any small bookshop in Britain and you’ll find a poetry scene as vibrant and wide-ranging as anything we have going on here. The same can be said of Ireland and Australia and all the other places our intrepid correspondents will explore. California is often described as “the other coast” but really there are so many other coasts out there. We look forward to hearing from all of them and introducing our readers to poets from all over the world.
— Gabrielle Calvocoressi

¤
“So what’s going on with those London riots, then?” asked the cab driver. I was headed to JFK en route to Heathrow; after eight years living in the U.S., I was returning to the U.K. He told me what he’d heard from the BBC, Fox News, Sky, and I chipped in my two cents, thinking back to when I was last living in North London, sharing what friends still living in the capital had told me.

I’d spent the day before listening to two soundtracks: first, the raised yells, splintered glass, dull thump of heaved bricks as another plate glass window in another high street shop, someone’s livelihood, someone else’s nine-to-five, shattered. The videos on the BBC website, some still live, brought the third night of riots in London, Birmingham, and Manchester into my home in three-by-five inch frames. Buildings the size of traffic circles shot flames 15 feet into the air.

Commentators on newspaper blogs and Facebook reported the latest, sounding their alarm, calling out these yobs, this riffraff, these kids. Some politicians were already blaming social media for stoking the riots. Meanwhile, local residents used Twitter to find one another and begin the clean-up. #whatjusthappened

I watched bands of hooded looters range the streets, jubilant, fired-up; some passersby nervously turnedthe other way, some paused to get out their camera phones. I was here when… What does it mean to be present for these riots, which for me take place in a London that used to be home, in a U.K. where I’m about to, as they say, repatriate? How can any of us make our presence at these riots meaningful, admit our implication in them?

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(Source: lareviewofbooks)

1 year ago -

10

O, Miami Day 2: There’s not enough to say about Gabby Calvocoressi except that L.A. is very lucky to have her. She co-organized Eating Our Words and stuck around to read from her second book “Apocalyptic Swing,” which features lots of boxing poems. She reads with a beautiful swagger, like a boxer herself.

2 years ago

I am a meat eater but squeamish about pig roasts. However, I love poetry and Boater’s Grill and how could I miss the Miami installment of L.A.’s Eating Our Words? Poetry and paella out by Biscayne Bay… what a way to open O,Miami.

2 years ago -

4