Overview
An Afternoon of Poetry & Music
Join CSU for an Los Angeles poets will perform their original work acompanied by a performance from Local Musicians - The Robyn’s Nest Quartet. The event is organized and hosted by CSU Board Member David Lloyd.
About the Poets
LA native Pam Ward recently released her poetry anthology, “BETWEEN GOOD MEN & NO MAN AT ALL” (World Stage Press) and is the author of novels “WANT SOME GET SOME,” (Kensington) and “BAD GIRLS BURN SLOW” (Kensington). A UCLA graduate, California Arts Council Fellow and Pushcart Poetry Nominee, Pam is also a founding member of the Leimert Park Book Fair. Published in numerous publications, including Voices of Leimert Park, New York’s Renaissance Noir, and the Los Angeles Times, she was recently honored by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in 2025 as the city’s Trailblazer writer. In 2024, Pam participated in the first Poetry Olympics in Paris and has been writer in residence and a board member of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation as well as The World Stage in Leimert. Pam conducted workshops for Black Women for Wellness, Art Center College of Design, the California African American Museum, and runs a design business as well as the community press, Short Dress Press. She’s the program director for the feminist political poetry troupe, THE OVARY OFFICE which showcased at the LA Festival of books. She recently completed a YA novel, STOVES DON’T CRY and the historical novel, “I’ll Get You My Pretty,” based on her family’s role in the Black Dahlia Murder. https://pamwardwriter.com/
Paul Vangelisti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, as well as a noted translator from Italian. His latest book, Just in Time, came out with Lithic Press in 2024. Prior to that his collaboration with artist William Xerra, Fragment Science, was published by Edizioni il verri (Milan, 2022). In 2015 he edited Amiri Baraka’s posthumous collected poems, S.O.S.: Poems, 1961-2014, for Grove Press. In 2006, Lucia Re’s and his translation of Amelia Rosselli’s War Variations won both the Premio Flaiano in Italy and the PEN-USA Award. In 2010, his translation of Adriano Spatola’s The Position of Things: Collected Poems, 1961-1992 was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. From 1971-1982 he was co-editor, with John McBride, of the literary magazine Invisible Cityand, from 1993-2002, edited Ribot, the annual report of the College of Neglected Science (CONS). He lives in Pasadena and Bagnone, Italy.
Robyn’s Nest Quartet, featuring musicians:
Jeff Kaye - trumpet
Karen Hammack - piano
Jeff Takaguchi - bass
Kendall Kay - drums
About the Host
David Lloyd is a retired professor of English at the University of California Riverside and has been involved with CSU since 2011. As well as a teacher, he’s a poet and playwright and has been involved in several social justice movements, from divestment against apartheid to Irish political prisoners’ rights. He is currently also on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (usacbi.org) and a member of the Pacifica Radio collective for South and West Asia and Northern Africa Region that produces KPFK’s weekly SWANA Region Radio show (https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/swana-region-radio/). Having grown up in Ireland, he has written extensively about the Irish famine, food policy and hunger in the context of colonial capitalism.