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Poetry Goes to the Movies - Reading & Discussion

This reading and conversation draws from Beyond Baroque’s anthology Poetry Goes to the Movies and features editor and poet Suzanne Lummis alongside contributing writers.

Taking place the weekend before the 2026 Academy Awards, this reading and conversation draws from Beyond Baroque’s anthology Poetry Goes to the Movies and features editor and poet Suzanne Lummis alongside contributing writers Sesshu Foster, Beth Ruscio, and Mariano Zaro. Together, the panel explores how poets, actors, and film-industry insiders working in Los Angeles respond to film—sometimes in homage, sometimes through interrogation—by revising, reimagining, and occasionally dismantling its narratives. 

Poetry becomes a way of answering moving images—many drawn from Hollywood films made on Burbank’s studio lots—that linger and take on a life in the poet’s imagination. The program invites audiences to experience movies not just as entertainment, but as texts to revisit, reinterpret, and remake through words and voice.

In partnership with Beyond Baroque

About Beyond Baroque

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading independent literary arts centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding public engagement with poetry, literature, and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based in the historic former City Hall building in Venice, California.

The Center offers a wide range of literary and arts programming, including readings and workshops, and houses a bookstore with the largest collection of new poetry books for sale in Los Angeles, along with an archive of more than 40,000 books documenting the history of poetry movements in Los Angeles and beyond. Over the years, Beyond Baroque has been closely associated with the Venice Beats, the punk movement, and generations of visiting writers and scholars.

About the Panelists

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