Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Yeah.

Did you hang around Beyond Baroque?

Oh, yeah.

I read it.

Beyond Baroque, I opened for Richard Meltzer.

It was another one of these incredible experiences of like, you know...

I can't even believe I'm getting to talk to him, let alone open for him.

The Venice West scene eventually faded, but, uh, sort of like a fire that where there's just an ember, um, still sort of glowing.

Uh, in the late '60s, uh, a fellow named George Drury Smith started in a storefront a, a publication he called Beyond Baroque, but it didn't stay just a publication for very long.

Uh, poets began gathering in the front room for a workshop, and out of that workshop emerged a reading series in Beyond Baroque, which is, which is still flourishing today, um, going on, uh, 60 years now, uh, in Venice.

Uh, it's at 681 Venice Boulevard in Venice.

Uh, Beyond Baroque became kind of a center of, of, of, uh, for poets in Los Angeles.

There were of course other scenes, um, happening, in particular out of the Watts Writers Workshop, uh, some of whose members eventually became involved with what is currently known as The World Stage, which, which also is, is still operating and thriving.

You have any number of individuals who sort of showed up in Los Angeles and started publications.

in, in the last h- in the last half of the past century.

Her name is Teresa, and it's a Vietnamese last name, so I'll spell it.

M-E-I, and then another word, C-H-U-C, is gonna do the reading there at, uh, Broke center, Beyond Baroque, and we're gonna move our little operation over there-

Sweet

... to support her book.