Beyond Certainty: Poetry as Prismatic Inquiry

In a time dominated by fractured realities, uncertainty, and polarizing discourse, how can poetry subvert historical inquiry? How might witnessing the historical in poetry bring us closer in communities toward finding common ground?

This event reunites three Southern California poets at Beyond Baroque—Eve Wood, Ed Schad and David Starkey—for readings and conversation about how they approach the reframing of events through question-and-answer, multi-vocal or multi-temporal epistolary constructions, and by subverting assumptions.

Prismatic inquiries, poetic trespassing, and surreal logic lead to invented or deflected answers suspended in time and space. Un/knowing is the destination, with arrival marked by understanding.

After the program in The Wanda Coleman Theater, join us for author signings and reception with light refreshments.

Doors Open: 7:00 PM I Readings: 7:30 PM

About the authors

David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. Emeritus Professor and the Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, he is currently Co-editor of Anacapa Review and The California Review of Books, and Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. More than 500 of his poems have appeared in literary journals such as American Scholar, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner and Southern Review, and his most recent books of poetry are You, Caravaggio (Pine Row Press, 2024), The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light (Vine Leaves Press, 2025) and Tell Me Why (BlazeVOX, 2025). His textbook, Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2022), is in its fourth edition.

Ed Schad is Curator and Publications Manager at The Broad in Los Angeles. He has curated and written publications for large, traveling surveys of the work of Robert Therrien, Mickalene Thomas, William Kentridge, Takashi Murakami, and Shirin Neshat. In 2021, he became a fellow of The Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC, and his first collection of poetry — Letters Apart, a collaboration with the painter Liat Yossifor — was published in Spring, 2023 by DoppleHouse Press. His poems and essays have been widely published, including in the L.A. Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, Gulf Coast, Blue Collar Review, The Blue Moon Review, The Nonconformist, and The Broken Plate. New poems are forthcoming in Camas and Sonora Review.

Eve Wood is a Los Angeles-based writer, artist and art critic. Her writing and poetry has been widely published in magazines and literary journals such as The New Republic, Best American Poetry 1997, The Denver Quarterly, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Santa Monica Review, Poetry, The Seattle Review, and many others. She holds a BFA and MFA (1992, 1994) from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from UC Irvine (1996) in creative writing. She is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Fellowship and a California Community Foundation Fellowship. She is the author and/or illustrator of eight collections of poetry and chapbooks.

About Beyond Baroque

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States' leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public's knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops. The building also houses a bookstore with a large collection of new poetry books for sale.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event. If you are tuning in this way, no ticket purchase is necessary.

If you are attending in person, ticket purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the Beyond Baroque bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. Please arrive early.

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.