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Local Poetry, US Pacific Coast

Online poetry calendars, local poetry centers and organizations in Pacific coastal states.

Bayond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Beyond Baroque has been doing public readings and free workshops for 40 years in Venice, California, and it is truly a literary activity center, with a bookstore, chapbook/small press archive, and its own publication program all housed in the old Venice City Hall.

Norcal Spoken Word

NorCal Spoken Word is a fairly anarchic confederation of slam masters and slam venues in all over Northern California, whose Web site is ever under construction, but provides links to poetry calendars for the region.

Pacific Northwest Writer’s Index

The Raven Chronicles offers “virtual baseball cards” for writers living and performing in the Pacific Northwest — look up Jim Andrews, Noel Franklin, Sheila Bender, Willie Smith...

Poetix.net

Poetix.net, “Poetry for Southern California,” has a great LA-area calendar, a comprehensive list of poetry venue addresses, plus calendars for outlying SoCal areas from local editors: Ventura/Santa Barbara (Phil Taggart), San Diego (Michael Klam) and San Luis Obispo (Kevin Patrick Sullivan).

The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University

Home of the American Poetry Archives, the Poetry Center also sponsors spring and fall reading series in the Bay area, as well as several annual writing awards.

Poetry Flash Literary Calendar

Poetry Flash has for decades been the indispensible calendar for California poetry events, distributed free on newsprint, and it’s even more useful in its Web form: searchable daily listings for Northern and Southern California, plus separate lists of open readings, workshops and festivals.

Poetry Santa Cruz

Poetry Santa Cruz feeds the poetic community in its small coastal city by sponsoring several reading series and workshops, and by offering a comprehensive calendar of literary events in and around Santa Cruz.

Portland: Reading Local

Portland: Reading Local aims to post everything there is to know about literary doings in Portland, Oregon, including weekly events listings, links to repeating reading series, and listings of local bookstores, writers and publishers.

Sacramento Poetry Center

This independent literary nexus has been live in Sacramento since 1979, and while it has a calendar of poetry events in & around Sacramento on its Web site, the place to go for the most up-to-date Sacto po-news is the SPC’s new blog.

San Francisco Poetry and Art Events

Nicole Savage maintains a detailed calendar of current poetry and art doings, ongoing events, regular reading series, and San Francisco poets at her SF Heart Web site.

Seattle Reading Local

Seattle Reading Local bills itself as “Your source for Puget Sound lit” and offers events listings as well as extensive news, reading reports, interviews and essays in its blog postings.

SPLAB! Northwest

The SPoken Word Lab in Auburn, Washington is a by-the-short-grassroots bootstrap of a delirium — take heart as flower all ye who enter hear/walking on yr ear. You can Splam if you want, ’kuers are Haiku Slamsters, and in general refresh in the vital waters of the Mighty Po.

Washington Poets Association

The Washington Poets Association sponsors an annual festival on Whidbey Island, The Burning Word, and lists open mic poetry venues in the Pacific Northwest on its Web site.

About Poetry Currents LOS ANGELES/SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Larry Jaffe was our Museletter correspondent based in the Los Angeles area, writing about poetry doings in LA, Hollywood and wherever he rambled (Britain, Sacramento, San Diego, Alabama, Arkansas, St. Louis...).

About Poetry Currents SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

Northern California correspondent Martha Cinader moved from New York and reported on her explorations in the brimming Bay Area poetry cauldron for our Museletter readers.

About Poetry Currents SEATTLE/PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Danika Dinsmore and Chris Blakeley were our Museletter team on the ground in the great Pacific Northwest.

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