Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center is a literary arts center located at 681 Venice Blvd. Venice, California, founded in 1968.

The Center launched its own imprint, Beyond Baroque Books, in 1998, dedicated to emerging, overlooked, out of print, and experimental writing, as well as the history and legacy of experimental and alternative writing, poetry, and the arts in Los Angeles.

The Center is based near the beach in Los Angeles’ old Venice City Hall, built 1906. It offers an extensive program of public readings, free workshops, a project room, bookstore, publications, and chapbook/small press archive.

George Drury Smith started publishing the magazine Beyond Baroque in 1968 from a storefront in Venice, which soon became a meeting place with workshops and space for readings, art, and music. Although 10,000 copies of the first issue were printed offset, subsequent issues were printed in-house using a four-color process. Later the magazines were printed on bound newsprint and distributed free. 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

John Harris

-Politics and government:*John Harris , English MP for Grampound in 1555*John Harris English MP for Bere Alston in 1640*John Harris , English MP for Liskeard...

, Leland Hickman

Leland Hickman

Leland Hickman was an American poet, editor, actor, and literary magazine publisher. During his lifetime, Hickman was best known as the publisher and editor of the influential magazine Temblor which was noted for the publication of many east and west coast language-related poets...

, Bob Flanagan

Bob Flanagan

Bob Flanagan was an American performance artist, comic, writer, poet, and musician.-Early life:...

, John Thomas

John Thomas

-Education:* John Martin Thomas , Twelfth president of Rutgers University* John R. Thomas , American intellectual property professor- Military history :* John Thomas , American general in the American Revolutionary War...

, Will Alexander, Jeff McDaniel, Philomene Long

Philomene Long

Philomene Long was an American poet. Long was born in Greenwich Village, New York City. From the 1960s onward, she lived most of her life in Venice, California. In 2005, she was made Poet Laureate of Venice, CA....

, Simone Forti

Simone Forti

Simone Forti , a postmodern American choreographer and musician, was born in Italy but moved to the United States at a young age. Throughout her career she became known for a style of dancing and choreography that was largely based on basic everyday movements, such as games and children's...

, Sarah Maclay, Liz Gonzales, and others. The Center’s first librarian was Exene Cervenka

Exene Cervenka

Exene Cervenka is an American writer, musician and artist, most famous as the co-lead vocalist of the Los Angeles punk rock band X.-Career:...

 of the "X", which was formed when Exene and John Doe

John Doe (musician)

John Doe is an American singer, songwriter, actor, poet and bass player. Doe founded the much-praised L.A. punk band X, of which he is still an active member. His musical performances and compositions span the rock, country and folk music genres...

 met at the Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop. Some of the 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's reading series, featuring over 200 writers a year, has included such names as: Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

; Patti Smith

Patti Smith

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....

, Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. is a Danish-American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner , Carlito's Way , Crimson Tide , Daylight , The...

; Jerry Casale

Jerry Casale

Jerry Joseph Casale is a former starting pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for three different teams between 1958 and 1962. Listed at 6' 2", 200 lb., he batted and threw right-handed....

 from the band Devo

Devo

Devo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...

; Graeme Revell

Graeme Revell

Graeme Revell is a New Zealand film score composer.Revell attended Auckland Grammar School, where he finished his final year in 7A...

, from the band SPK

SPK (band)

SPK, formed in 1978 in Sydney, Australia, was a 1980s and early 1990s industrial music and noise music group. One member, Graeme Revell, would later go on to become a successful Hollywood movie composer.-History:...

; Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

; John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

; Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

; Philip Levine

Philip Levine (poet)

Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...

; Ed Dorn

Ed Dorn

Edward Merton Dorn was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is Gunslinger.-Overview:...

; Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman is an American poet. She is known as "the L.A. Blueswoman," and "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles."-Biography:...

; CK Williams; Lewis MacAdams

Lewis MacAdams

Lewis MacAdams is an American poet, journalist, political activist, and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles, California.-Life and work:...

; Harry Northup

Harry Northup

-Life and career:Northup was born in Amarillo, Texas. He lived in seventeen places by the time he was seventeen, but mostly lived in Sidney, Nebraska, where he graduated from high-school in 1958. From 1958 to 1961, he served in the United States Navy, where he attained the rank of Second Class...

, original member of the Wednesday night poetry workshop; James Tate

James Tate

James Tate may refer to:* James Tate , Headmaster of Richmond School 1796–1833)* James "Honest Dick" Tate , State Treasurer of Kentucky...

; Leland Hickman

Leland Hickman

Leland Hickman was an American poet, editor, actor, and literary magazine publisher. During his lifetime, Hickman was best known as the publisher and editor of the influential magazine Temblor which was noted for the publication of many east and west coast language-related poets...

; Alice Notley

Alice Notley

Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...

 and V Vale who formed a tabloid format zine focusing on various counterculture and underground topics named RE/Search Publications documenting punk subculture

Punk subculture

The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...

, among thousands of others both famous and infamous.

Beyond Baroque archives and sells chapbooks, small press

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 poetry and experimental fiction. An index of the chapbook archive is online. Center series include experimental music, film screenings, and visual art. Beyond Baroque has facilitated or organized festivals, including the city-wide 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

Bill Mohr

Wilbur T "Bill" Mohr was an Australian rules footballer who played with the St Kilda Football Club in the Victorian Football League ....

, Little Caesar edited by programs curator Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist.-Career:Cooper grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Arcadia, California. His first forays into literature came early, focusing on imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, de Sade, and Baudelaire...

, a series edited by David Trinidad

David Trinidad

-Biography:Trinidad was born in Los Angeles, California. In the early 1980s, he was one of a group of poets who were active at the Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice, California. Other members of this group included Dennis Cooper, Bob Flanagan, and Amy Gerstler. As editor of Sherwood...

, the magazine FOREHEAD

Forehead

For the Arsenal striker see GervinhoIn human anatomy, the forehead is the fore part of the head. It is, formally, an area of the head bounded by three features, two of the skull and one of the scalp. The top of the forehead is marked by the hairline, the edge of the area where hair on the scalp...

 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

Philomene Long

Philomene Long was an American poet. Long was born in Greenwich Village, New York City. From the 1960s onward, she lived most of her life in Venice, California. In 2005, she was made Poet Laureate of Venice, CA....

, Nancy Agabian, Simone Forti

Simone Forti

Simone Forti , a postmodern American choreographer and musician, was born in Italy but moved to the United States at a young age. Throughout her career she became known for a style of dancing and choreography that was largely based on basic everyday movements, such as games and children's...

, K. Curtis Lyle, Benjamin Hollander, and Ammiel Alcalay

Ammiel Alcalay

Ammiel Alcalay is an American poet, scholar, critic, translator, and prose stylist. Born and raised in Boston, he is a first-generation American, son of Sephardic Jews from São Tomé and Príncipe...

, 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

Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

, Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman is an American poet. She is known as "the L.A. Blueswoman," and "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles."-Biography:...

, Jack Hirschman

Jack Hirschman

Jack Hirschman is an American poet and social activist who has written more than 50 volumes of poetry and essays.-Biography:...

, Christoph Dreager, Diane di Prima

Diane di Prima

Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

, David Meltzer

David Meltzer

David Meltzer is an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has described him as "one of the greats of post-World-War-Two San Francisco poets and musicians." Meltzer came to prominence with inclusion of his work in the anthology, The...

, Sesshu Foster

Sesshu Foster

Sesshu Foster is an American poet.He has taught composition and literature in East LA since 1985, and has also taught at the University of Iowa, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Jack Kerouac School's Summer Writing Program.He was in residence...

, Ammiel Alcalay, Yan Li, and more.

The Center’s staff and board have historically included writers and artists, from the organization's founding by Smith, an experimental fiction writer, in 1968, through key programming figures including Manazar Gamboa, Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist.-Career:Cooper grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Arcadia, California. His first forays into literature came early, focusing on imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, de Sade, and Baudelaire...

, Dennis Philips, Amy Gerstler

Amy Gerstler

Amy Gerstler is an American poet. Her books of poetry include Ghost Girl ; Medicine - finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award; Crown of Weeds ; Nerve Storm ; Bitter Angel - winner of the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award - The True Bride and Dearest Creature, .Described by the Los...

, Benjamin Weissman, and the current director, Richard Modiano.

External links

• Official site
• Beyond Baroque - Fred Dewey, Executive Director KCET Departures Venice