Encore: Where Songs Become Poems

From Flowersong to Shiking, poetry is inherently musical. The panel features poets from Los Angeles whose work responds to contemporary music––including Punk, Hip-Hop, Blues, and other genres in pop culture. Poets create lyrical flames, navigating the fast-pace changes in culture and technology. The music we hear today may have answers for the collective liberating vision of the future.

Please note that RSVPing to this event is required for entry.

About the participants:

Born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Daryl Gussin is a writer and musician who has been awkwardlystanding around at punk shows for the last twenty-something years. Thankfully at some point in his late teens he decided to become a little more productive, and has been working on zines, setting up shows, and playing in bands consecutively since then. Jessica Mills says his voice, “Rises above the dismal din and resonates with urgency, capturing moments of rebellion and reflection.” His focus revolves around the honest, bittersweet, and ultimately triumphant aspects of counter-
culture and its flavorful inhabitants. The heartbreaks, the implosions, and the defiant victories. Community overcommercialism, create and destroy.

Nikolai Garcia is the son of Mexican immigrants and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. His poems have been published in Huizache, Mobile Data Mag, Razorcake, Latino Book Review and various other journals and anthologies. His second chapbook, All the Sad Music, was published by DSTL Arts (2025). He is cohost, (with Mauricio Moreno), of Trenches Full of Poets, an open mic in Long Beach.

Alyesha Wise is an award-winning, published poet, educator and speaker from Camden, N.J. Currently residing in LA, she is the Director of Programming for Street Poets, Inc., an organization mostly serving injustice-impacted youth with mentorship and arts programming. Alyesha has been featured on platforms and in publications such as OWN TV, BET, LA Times, Bustle, Afropunk, PBS, Buzzfeed and more. Other collabs include the ACLU, The Shabazz Center, The Nantucket Project, Brave New Films and the Google Interstellar Project. Ron Howard once wrote about Alyesha's work, "Very Powerful." My Older Brother, A Famous Rapper, is Alyesha’s latest book of poetry, released in fall 2025 by El Martillo Press.

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Whittier, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Testify (2017) and Trouble Funk (2023). His poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is an assistant professor of English at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program.

Iván Salinas is a chilango poet and zinester based in the SFV. He's the co-founder of Drifter Zine a publication highlighting artists from LA and beyond. His chapbook Dealer: Poesía Carcacha is a bilingual collection published by There's Only Peace in Death Press in 2026. His writings have been published in The Acentos Review, Mobile Data Mag, Broken Lens Journal, and Razorcake.

Convened by Beyond Baroque.

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