Thursday, April 10, 2008 -- 4 p.m.
Live poetry reading for rush-hour commuters at Union Station honors 10th anniversary of Poetry in Motion® L.A. Metro and the Poetry Society of America present acclaimed poets Elena Karina Byrne, Suzanne Lummis and Marisela Norte.
Location: Union Station East Portal
One Gateway Plaza, downtown Los Angeles 90012
In a special tribute to the 10th anniversary of Poetry in Motion® readings in Los Angeles, the Poetry Society of America presents acclaimed California poets Elena Karina Byrne, Suzanne Lummis and Marisela Norte in a live poetry reading during the afternoon rush hour, April 10, at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
Commemorative bookmarks, inscribed with the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Octavio Paz, will be distributed to commuters, passers-by and poetry lovers.
The program is co-sponsored by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro).
The rush-hour readings personify and extend the experience of Poetry in Motion ® L.A., where the work of poets inscribed on placards placed aboard nearly 2,400 Metro buses brings poetry to more than one million bus riders a day.
Metro, in partnership with Poetry in Motion® L.A., has staged annual rush-hour readings during National Poetry Month since 1998. The alternative space in the context of a transit system has become a welcome platform for the spoken and written word, delivered to delighted audiences by published poets in great performances.
Metro seeks to change public perception about transit and to transform the customer’s experience through excellence in art and design. Central to this objective, Metro Creative Services includes the agency’s in-house design studio, which creates Metro’s brand communications, and the agency’s art and design excellence programs, which commission wide-ranging projects by visual artists and promote overall design quality of customer environments.
From intelligently designed, user-friendly customer information, engaging and effective advertising and a newly designed fleet of buses and trains to large scale site-specific artworks by world-class artists and live poetry readings, Metro employs art and design to create a sense of place, engage transit riders, and improve the quality of life throughout Southern California.
For more information about Metro Art and its free docent guided tours, visit www.metro.net/art or call Metro Art at 213-922-4ART.
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On the tenth anniversary of Poetry in Motion® L.A., poets Elena Karina Byrne, Suzanne Lummis and Marisela Norte will invoke the muse to lift the heart, soothe the spirit and invite Metro riders and public transportation users alike to cherish the moment during rush-hour readings at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
The poets will be presented by the Poetry Society of America.
In an evening presentation, Quinn will present acclaimed poets Molly Bendall, Eloise Klein Healy, and David St. John in a live reading at 7 p.m. at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium of the Santa Monica Library, Main Branch, located at 601 Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica.
Admission to both events is free.
About the poets:
- Marisela Norte is a performance artist who writes most of her poetry on the No. 18 bus that takes her from East Los Angeles into downtown L.A. She has conducted readings and workshops throughout the U.S. and worked in collaboration with other notable artists, including Luis Alfaro and Diane Gamboa. Her spoken word CD, "Norte/word," features poetic sketches that reflect her passionate observations as a writer and rider on Los Angeles city buses.
- Poet, teacher and performance artist Suzanne Lummis, described as a quintessential voice of poetry in Southern California by Poetry Flash magazine, is founding director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and leads the master class workshops in poetry at the UCLA Extension.
- Elena Karina Byrne is a teacher, editor, Poetry Consultant and Moderator for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and former 12-year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, and is now Literary Programs Director for The Ruskin Art Club and MOCA's Night Vision programs. She also works on documentaries with Red Car Studios. A 12-time Pushcart nominee, her many publications include, The Yale Review, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and Best American Poetry 2005. Books include: The Flammable Bird(Zoo /Tupelo Press 2002); MASQUE (Tupelo Press, 2008). Forthcoming works include This Fable Language (2011), Voyeur Hour (art/poetry), and a collection of essays entitled, Beautiful Insignificance (2011).
- Molly Bendall has received the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, the Lynda Hull Poetry Award from Denver Quarterly, and two Pushcart Prizes. She teaches poetry at the University of Southern California.
- Eloise Klein Healy is the author of six books of poetry and her work is widely anthologized in numerous published collections. Ms. Healy is a Grand Prize winner of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival Competition.
- David St. John has been honored with many of the most significant prizes for poets, including an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He currently teaches at the University of Southern California.
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