Peggy Dobreer, Community Relations for LMU Extension and Kathleen Harris, National and International Scholarship Office are collaborating to curate an evening of Poetry by and for Men and Women for Others. In solidarity with poets and activists around the world on Saturday, September 24, 2011. Free and Open to all.

“It is difficult to get news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.-William Carlos Williams

“People do not die for lack of food, they die from lack of compassion.” -Satish Kumar

Come out and excavate your compassion with performances from Los Angelels Street Poets,discovered at Loyola Law School’s Center for  Reconciliation, including: Mary Beltran, Art Quiroz, Andres Rivera, and Chirag Menon; LMU Professor Emeritus, Carroll Kearley, LMU Extension Poet-In-Residence,Brendan Constantine; and Jericho Brown, 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Recipient in Poetry.

Jericho Brown worked as speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. The recipientof the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment forthe Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread LoafWriters’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is an Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego. His poems have appeared injournals and anthologies including, The Iowa Review, jubilat, OxfordAmerican, A Public Space, and 100 Best African American Poems.His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award.

Carroll C. Kearley, a retiredprofessor of philosophy, was born in 1930 in a farmhouse on the SnakeRiver Plain. His early education, grades 1-12 took place in two small towns, and in aone-room country school just up the road from his parents’ poverty-line farm. He was awarded a B.A. in English Literature from Santa Clara University, anM.A. in English Literature from Loyola University in Los Angeles, and the Ph.D.in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. His first collection ofpoetry, DEITY-ALPHABETS (Tebot Bach,2009) is followed by his second, THEARMENIANWATCHMAKER (Tebot Bach, 2010).

BrendanConstantine is an ardent supporter of Southern California’s poetry communitiesand one of its most recognized poets. In 2002 Mr. Constantine was nominated forPoet Laureate of California. His work has appeared in numerous journals, mostnotably Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Review, The Cortland Review, RUNES,and LA Times Bestseller The Underground Guide to Los Angeles. New workis forthcoming in Rattle, 2River View, and Verse Wisconsin. Hiscollection, LETTERS TO GUNS, was released in February 2009 from RedHen Press and BIRTHDAY GIRL WITH POSSUM, a National Book Award nominee was released in August 2011, from WriteBloody Press.



In 1995, Street Poets Inc. founder Chris Henrikson began teaching a weekly poetry workshop inthe Los Angeles County Probation Department’s Camp Fred Miller as a volunteerthrough the Writers Guild of America. The experience transformed his life, and,in the process, Street Poets United, a grassroots poetry collective was born. NowStreet Poets Inc., a California 501c3, non-profit corporation, the group continuesto provide transformational workshops for youth and young adults at school andjuvenile detention sites through Los Angeles, while expanding and providing peace-makingwork in the community. Street Poets Inc. performers will include: Mary Beltran, Chirag Menon, Art Quiroz and Andres Rivera