Poetry of Pride w/ Brian Sonia-Wallace
Last Friday was one for the books. For our inaugural poetry night, Grand Performances teamed up with the Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, Brian Sonia-Wallace to curate an evening of poetry and spoken word from no less than 13 artists from the LGBT community in honor of Pride month.
Going into the night, we had no doubt that we were going to witness some thought-provoking lines from our lineup of seasoned professional wordsmiths. However, we were blown away by just how profound some of these stories were. These were poems of strength and defiance, vulnerability and longing... growth... escapism... wisdom and foolishness. At times, even straight up fun raunchiness that earned bellows of laughter from the crowd.
Our performers defied easy categorization. They spanned every race, gender, age group, and socio economic-background. From this wide spectrum of humanity, there came a unifying theme from amongst the poets: that the joys of the journey of self discovery far outweigh the pain, and that we all deserve love and dignity.
Poets featured: Steven Reigns, Terry Wolverton, Victor Yates, Carla Sameth, Jen Cheng, Meliza Bañales, Linda Ravenswood, Nate Lovell, Marcos James, Jose Rios, Jeffrey McCray, Sam Luo, and Pickle with DJ Succubus
The entire program can be found on our YouTube.com/grandperformances channel.