P. Segal, MA
Riding the Poetry Train
Writers publish and forget the articles of yesteryear, until a stranger finds one, and somehow it
changes things.
Three years ago, the Dutch artist Erik Van Loon, known for his massive scale events and
activism, reached out to me on Twitter, having found one of my forgotten articles about the
night Charles Bukowski read his work in my living room. Van Loon, a huge fan of American
poets, wanted my help with an event he was formulating, LA Poetry Beach.
Inspired by Kerouac, Van Loon envisioned the Amtrak Poetry Train, from the east coast to west,
picking up poets at stops along the route to Los Angeles, and collecting submissions for a
commemorative book. In Los Angeles, he planned numerous readings in the downtown area,
with the reading finale at Venice Beach, where this year he plans to replace the "Muscle Beach"
sign with a "Poetry Beach" one. At each stop across America, poets would exit the train to read
their work, including small places where a poetry reading had never happened before.
The first poet to submit, in year one, was the Los Angeles poet, Greg Bell. Like me, a veteran of
the legendary San Francisco Cacophony Society, that gave the world things like Burning Man,
Santa Con, and The Marcel Proust Support Group, Greg was entranced by the concept of LA
Poetry Beach, an event for American poets, conceived and finessed by a person living in
Rotterdam—who doesn't consider himself a poet—a wildly passionate streak across the
American countryside, in an era of psychological depletion, while awaiting the firm hand of
justice.
Over the time we've known Erik Van Loon, Greg and I became enmeshed in his poetic
extravaganza. We have mostly served as the sounding board for Erik's unstoppable imagination,
explaining the constraints of the American Way. confounding his Dutch logic. In the last
months, we've seen him through acquisition of a 1940's taxi, with the license plate
POETRY CAB—his version of Further—and most recently. the script of the film he intends to
make of this years event.
LA Poetry Beach is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for poets, unless they can do it again. It may
well be a lodestar in the history of poetry in America, and you;re invited to come along. This
year;s theme for submissions is the widely interpreted "I Could Never Talk to You," and entries
must be received by September 1. To submit or sign up for the ride, go to
https://lapoetrybeach.com/.
P Segal
BA UCLA, MA New College of California
Arthouse founder and director
P Segal, is a writer, Proust scholar, restaurateur, and therapist, who was a founder of Burning Man and the author of Proust Said That, the zine that launched an international Proust revival. The SBA credited her restaurant, Caffe Proust, with the revitalization of the Western Addition neighborhood that became NOPA. A San Francisco native, she’s been hailed as a local legend, and all of her projects have received international press.
psegal@arthousesf.org