Beyond baroque books
Pacific Coast Poetry Series PUBLICATIONS
Coming in 2025: Poetry Goes to the Movies, an anthology of national reach, with poems exploring aspects of individual films, the movie-going experience, movies and memory, and in context of the larger culture, as well as "the industry" and the behind-the-scenes production end. Poets featured include D. A. Powell, Lynn Emanuel, Ed Hirsch, Martín Espada, Dorothy Barresi, John Murillo, Tim Seibles, Kim Addonizio and A. Van Jordan.
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What Happens Next Is Anyone’s Guess
Here is a collection that reveals what happens when skill meets substantial talent. And what, precisely, is it that happens? The unpredictable—from poem to poem, line to line, a cascade of surprises. Mischief, memory, dream and lusty desire come into play here, and one recurring feature: in virtuoso displays of heady language, the blood and bone of the animal and natural world.
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Lost and Local
"Leaving the theater I stand outside in a dark of black lipstick the world wears when everyone leaves." Language like this—savory, sensuous and ripe with the unexpected—is among Carol Ellis' strengths, along with an intelligence that converts the ordinary into the wild and the strange. They pour from her, these poems, not in the form of stories exactly, narrative, but in a profusion of responses to the world, the seen, the experienced and the imagined. "Thunder. The dogs bark. The gods are angry say those who believe in gods. The gods are always angry or out in the back alley by the dumpster smoking a cigarette." Reader, think of Carol Ellis' poems this way: like stepping into the realm of dreams, but dreams wittier and more sumptuous than those that favor most of us each night.
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In Order of Disappearance "The third volume in the Pacific Coast Poetry Series, IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE is a meditation on life and death, on identity in all senses of that word, on making art out of the unthinkable. On surviving and not surviving. Historical moments are not fixed history, but a fluid and present condition all occurring in the living present. I did not see hopelessness. I saw life. And even with the suffering, there is great beauty and ultimately redemption. This is a book of prayers and incantations; it is a document of witness that for me illuminates the darkness. The book raises questions regarding death, guilt, and the meaning of suffering. It is history made present and personal."
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Our Foreigner "funny, stark, spot-on and utterly beautiful" comprise her collection, OUR FOREIGNER, "a brilliant and dark comedy." This is Betsy Sholl's apt description for the poetry of Nance Van Winckel, one of the Northwest's foremost poets and writers, and her latest release—from The Pacific Coast Poetry Series/Beyond Baroque Books. Van Winckel's own relatives traveled west enduring the hardship and tests of character that confronted those who made such treks in the 1800's. OUR FOREIGNER explores, among other conditions and anomalies, ideas of journey, progress and regress, travel both physical and psychological. A variety of voices populate this collection, speakers from the past, or bright, sassy, contemporary folks talking as if all they have to do is open their mouths and out flies poetry. They manage, these poems, to be at once plain-speaking and brainy, lucid and deeply mysterious.
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Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond * Featuring 112 poets “Suzanne Lummis has assembled a variety of poems that constantly surprise and enchant the contemporary reader and bring glory to the City of Angels.” – Lawrence Goldstein, author of Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the Essential Poems of the City
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PACIFIC COAST POETRY SERIES EDITORIAL STAFF
Suzanne Lummis, Editor
Suzanne Lummis Suzanne Lummis received her MA in English with a focus in poetry from FSU Fresno, then Fresno State, during its legendary era. She has been associated with the Los Angeles based Stand-up Poetry movement of the 90s and also with the "poem noir." NPR's All Things Considered profiled her in "Writing Noir Poetry with L.A. as a Backdrop." In 2024, she guest-edited a special issue of the international literary journal, Pratik, giving it a Noir focus, Darkness in Style. Suzanne co-founded and directed The Los Angeles Poetry Festival (active 1989 - 2016). For 30 years she was an influential teacher in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and has been honored with Beyond Baroque's George Drury Smith Award for Excellence in Poetry, and as a 2018/19 COLA (City of Los Angeles) Fellow. Suzanne’s fourth collection, Crime Wave, will be published by Giant Claw, an imprint of What Books, in 2025.
Henry J. Morro, Founding Editor
Henry J. Morro is the author of the poetry collection, Corpses of Angels (Bombshelter Press). His poetry has been published in numerous
journals—including Seneca Review, New Letters, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, ASKEW, Chiron Review, California Quarterly, Sonora Review,
Pacific Review, and in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth Press). Zoot Suit Files: New and Selected Poems was published in
2020. Henry passed away in 2022.
Liz Camfiord, Associate Editor
Liz Camfiord began her publishing career with magazine and small presses, but has worked for the last twenty years for Penguin Random House with booksellers and librarians.