[image description: a poster advertising the Pride poetry event whose full details are below.]

I don’t normally just post random press releases I get, but this was too cool not to share! I love when community events, especially celebrations like Pride, work in a literature element.

A group of queer poets will be answering calls to a hotline and interviewing the callers to write custom poems for them, and it’s for a good cause!

Details below:

Celebrate Pride with Poetry! LGBTQ+ Poetry Group to Write Free Custom Poems for 500 Callers

June 11-13 10am-10pm PT

Dial 202-998-3510 for a custom poem!

In honor of Pride month, West Hollywood-based LGBTQ+ poetry group Pride Poets will be running a poetry hotline to write custom poems for callers based on the topic of your choice! Call in and speak to a poet, have a poem written, and receive a copy via mail or email. Poets will interview callers about this year’s themes of love and pride to write unique poems for each individual in a process that takes 10 minutes and will change your day. For every call, an anonymous donor will contribute $15 to the LA LGBT Center up to $8,000.

The hotline will be followed by an in-person installation with ONE Archives Pride Publics exhibition on Robertson on Saturday, June 19, and a final sharing of poems and stories virtually with the LA County Library on Tuesday, June 22 at 5:30pm.

This project is supported by a grant from the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division as part of the One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival (May 22 - June 30). More info at www.weho.org/pride or @wehoarts. 

HOW THE HOTLINE WORKS

The Poetry Hotline will run marathon-style 10am to 10pm on June 11-13. Call in and receive a custom poem written on a manual typewriter! Our poets interview you, so don't worry if you don't know what you want a poem about -- we'll find the perfect subject for your poem.

Poems will be written live on the hotline(!) with poetry as hold music, and will be read to you by the writer. Afterward, you may choose to have a copy of the poem mailed or emailed to you.

The whole process takes 10 minutes and will change your day. You can also listen on the line to our Permeable Poetry Project, pre-recorded poems by living LGBTQ+ poets.

Our hotline is made possible thanks to TryTank Experimental Laboratory, a project of the Virginia Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary. More at www.trytank.org.

Pride Poets x Pride Publics (in person installation)

Saturday June 19, 2021, 3-4:30pm

ONE Gallery, West Hollywood 

626 N Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069

ONE Archives Foundation, in partnership with Pride Poets, invites the community for an afternoon of live poetry-writing in response to our current exhibition Pride Publics: Words and Actions. Pride Poets will write custom poems for visitors relating to the exhibition theme and the visitors’ experience of the artwork, potentially commenting on the place of queer and trans elders and lineages in their lives. Works created may be shared at a culminating Pride Poets virtual reading event with LA County on June 22. 

Pride Poets x LA County Library (virtual reading)

Tuesday, June 22, 5:30 pm

Register at https://lacountylibrary.org/pride/

Poems from the Hotline with Pride Poets

Pride Poets brings together the LGBTQ+ literary community and members of the public, popping up at events with typewriters or virtually crafting custom poem requests. Join us for a moving, inspirational, and fun evening hearing their favorite new poems written for callers during their Poetry Hotline this year. Learn the stories behind the poems and how they write a piece for a stranger in just minutes, commemorating personal queer histories. For adults.