Pacific Coast Poetry Series/Beyond Baroque Books selects Carol Potter’s poetry collection What Happens Next is Anyone’s Guess from nationwide submissions

Beyond Baroque Books has selected Carol Potter’s What Happens Next is Anyone’s Guess as the next title in its Pacific Coast Poetry Series imprint. Potter’s collection of poetry, her sixth, distinguishes itself through its charged, skillfully paced writings that outwit readers’ expectations, and a voice that moves effortlessly between the ordinary and the absurd, humor and passion:

An hour or two had gone by and they were still
     driving about town, looking out at the lake, calling out to
people in the crosswalk, watching the freight train shuffle
     into town across the causeway and thinking about breaking the one

unbroken window in the abandoned discount store.
     They were aware there was some time going by that they could
have been doing other, more productive things like
     looking for new jobs for instance, maybe joining The Guard.

—from “Seven Girls Driving Around Town” by Carol Potter, included in What Happens Next is Anyone’s Guess, forthcoming from Pacific Coast Poetry Series

Carol Potter grew up on a farm—environs that make an occasional appearance in her poems—and now lives in Vermont, but has a longtime connection to Los Angeles as a teacher in Antioch University’s MFA program. She has published several books of prize-winning poetry. Carol won the FIELD Poetry Prize from Oberlin College Press for her book Some Slow Bees; Otherwise Obedient (Red Hen) was a 2008 Lambda Literary Award finalist, and Short History of Pets won the 1999 Cleveland State Poetry Center Award and the Balcones Award. Alice James published her books Upside Down in the Dark and Before We Were Born. She has been included in a Pushcart Anthology and other poems appear in noted literary journals such as The New England Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry, Hotel Amerika, APR, The Los Angeles Review and The Kenyon Review.

The Pacific Coast Poetry Series, an imprint of Beyond Baroque Books, was founded by Henry Morro in 2013 and is edited by poet Suzanne Lummis. Liz Camfiord is the Associate Editor. The Pacific Coast Poetry Series’ inaugural title Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond was selected by David Ulin, then Book Editor of The Los Angeles Times, as one of the top ten books of 2015. The series has since published several collections from poets of the coastal region. For 2021, the call for manuscripts was nationwide.

Beyond Baroque Books is the publishing arm of Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, which has been one of the nation’s most successful and influential grassroots incubators of the literary arts since 1968. In 1971, Beyond Baroque began issuing chapbooks in order to publish works by both emerging and established poets. Titles include the first book from Los Angeles’s inaugural poet laureate, Eloise Klein Healy, and works by Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Bill Mohr, Harry Northup, Holly Prado, and Wanda Coleman. Over the years, Beyond Baroque Books has published works by Jean-Luc Godard, Jack Hirschman, Diane di Prima, David Meltzer and others.

The Pacific Coast Poetry Series imprint was founded by Henry Morro in 2013, and is edited by poet Suzanne Lummis. Previous titles in the Pacific Coast Poetry Series include the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the top ten books of 2015), Nance Van Winckel’s Our Foreigner (finalist American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards), Carine Topal’s In Order of Disappearance, and Carol Ellis’ Lost and Local. Poets selected for the Pacific Coast Poetry Series receive $1,000. The Pacific Coast Poetry Series is supported in part by a grant from the Lawrence Lipton Trust.

Carol Potter will debut her collection in an online reading on June 2, and at in-person reading at Beyond Baroque on June 18.

For more information, contact:

Liz Camfiord
liz@beyondbaroque.org
(310)822-3006