LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL : The Long, Lyrical Road to Visibility : The festival’s ‘Women’s Voices’ series aims to bolster the misunderstood image of literary life in L.A.

Poet Michelle T. Clinton is raging.

Not about the usual blemishes on her horizon; nor the sociopolitical imperfections that she unflinchingly tackles in her work. Of late, Clinton’s been watching too many of her literary comrades recede in the distance. Too many going-away party announcements, telephone-tree rumors, sudden overnight departures. “I always get the feeling that people are just visiting, always looking for somewhere else to go,” she laments.

Transience and invisibility are old battles, many of L.A.’s literary fixtures, like Clinton, are quick to point out. And she, along with a few other enduring city voices, will take part in “Women’s Voices”--the Los Angeles Festival’s monthlong literary series, designed to bolster the much maligned and misunderstood image of literary life in L.A.

Local poet and performance artist Akilah Nayo Oliver, poet Gloria Alvarez and writer Fadwa El Guindi have attempted to elevate the status of local literary artists in the world market by building on the festival’s smaller 1990 model (readings by 10 Latin American poets). The threesome, who first met during the planning sessions two years ago, say the concept grew out of a series of conversations about the silencing of women and their role in shaping culture. With that as their charge, the group cast a wide and varied net.

Positioned behind microphones on various stages around the city, from West Hollywood and Santa Monica to Venice and Leimert Park, the writers represent a wide array of movements and disciplines and hail from all over the globe. Voices ushered in for the event include Gwendolyn Brooks, Thulani Davis, Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Georgiana Sanchez, Partow Nooriala, Naomi Shihab Nye, Suzan-Lori Parks, Salma Khadra Jayusi, Abena P. A. Busia, Ntozake Shange and Anne Waldman.

While representing the festival’s focus regions--Africa and the Middle East--the plan, says Oliver, is for L.A. writers to weigh in on salient critical issues while participating in what she hopes will be lively literary discussion with authors from around the world. In other words, showing the assembly their stuff. Instead of reading from their works, many (but not all) of the L.A.-based panel participants will engage in debate on wide-ranging matters.

“I really feel isolated out here as an artist,” says Oliver, who says she was aware at the outset that this sort of structuring might make waves among the local literati. “My concern was that L.A. has this wonderful ‘cool’ poetry scene, cafe readings and the like. And it’s fine . . . but we don’t get published. So the general perception is that there is not much going on. We need to get some critical writing going on here in addition to doing the reading. Right now it’s only entertainment. A scene. We need to take it one step further.”

Oliver began her selection process by inviting authors whose work displayed a “critical edge,” thus already stirring provocative discussion. She looks at this event as a giant step out of the shadows for L.A. writers and hopes as well that it will provide precious groundwork to be used as a working paradigm for the future.

However, long before publicity packages shot out to the various participants--not to mention the press--some locals began to lodge reservations with a just-off-the-assembly-line-model they feel may only serve to further marginalize the very artists it set out to help.

“I’m very happy with the level of (literary) discussion,” says Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, a Los Angeles-based poet born in Ghana who will be participating in the “Life and Art of the Streets” portion of the series. “But,” she adds, “to ignore that there is something that really exists here invalidates what people have been doing . . . all along.

“There are people working to bring our message into the community--literary workshops at Beyond Baroque, the Electronic Cafe. They’re not doing it the East Coast way, they’re doing it the L.A. way. And we need to start applauding ourselves.”

Danquah, who before a brief residence in Washington, D.C., last year rotated regularly within the local reading orbit, perceives the festival’s format as a chance for L.A. artists to garner center-stage recognition for their quiet yet persistent work. “I don’t have a problem with what exists. It’s what’s absent,” Danquah clarifies. “I am pleased that people who’ve been invited were invited, but I’d like to see more L.A. poets up there reading. I think that it does a disservice. I think that writers have to start being appreciated as writers, and that --their work--is their cultural activism.”

The local writing community and the discussion that grows out of it might be more difficult to discern or to locate largely because of the fact that, as Danquah points out, it flows from non-traditional channels.

Poet and activist Terry Wolverton agrees: “We have very few literary journals here in L.A. And very few literary journals outside (Los Angeles) include L.A. writers.” She would like to see the city achieve a higher, more distinguished profile and is intrigued by the way Oliver has chosen to spend her budgetary allotment--investing in dialogues as a way to introduce voices who usually plot their words on the page.

“The literary community (in Los Angeles) isn’t primarily based in the university as it is in other places,” Wolverton says. “I think that’s a positive thing. The literary arts are rooted in the community. It comes from the streets. It comes from lived experience.” This, Wolverton believes, is the city’s strongest suit. “They are not academics or theorists . . . they’re folks. The artists don’t just sit around in little rooms waiting for inspiration. A lot of us are activists, organizers, working for other artists.”

This activism has been an essential component in the life of the literary Angeleno; it has buoyed spirits that would have been otherwise lost. For all the said sunshine and wealth, L.A.’s literary atmosphere has been far from easy or kind. “We don’t have a lot of institutions to support us,” Wolverton stresses. So it’s been catch as catch can. “We encourage and nurture each other, because there isn’t a lot to compete for. There is a really cooperative spirit.”

But Wanda Coleman has seen what happens when sturdy writers wear down and suffer in the chill of indifference. With seven volumes of poetry and prose to her credit, she too has the battle scars to prove her tenure. The respect factor, she maintains, transcends the arena of art and is part of a larger regional problem.

Coleman was part of the famous Watts Writers Workshop, a collective that sprouted to life shortly after the flames and sirens died down during the summer of 1965. It spawned writers and critics who have taken their careers east, toward major book deals, respect and attention. “I thought things would have gotten better after Watts,” says Coleman, the pragmatist who has observed--and not silently--the mood become far, far worse. “Local artists have been marginalized. We’ve been closeted for the most part. That’s the kind of artistic politics that have been played on this turf.”

And for Coleman, simply talking about issues, work and process isn’t adequate enough; impromptu panel discussions would be bereft of the passion and emotion essential to performance and, above all, to her message.

“I have found that audiences respond better when I’m doing my thing than when I’m talking about doing my thing,” says Coleman, who will bring her conversation in the form of poetry and prose to the Pacific Design Center on Aug. 31.

“I’m going to be reading work shaped by this city and my life in the city. My whole life has been defined by the problems of the city of L.A,” she explains. Access to an audience is “the greatest dialogue of all.”

“I think sitting around talking isn’t the point. As Billie Holiday sang, ‘Don’t explain.’ ”

But some will attempt to make the best of their opportunity to pursue dialogue with those writers engaged in work at the farther reaches of the country and on foreign shores. They plan to challenge ideas and view old themes and outmoded structures through a new prism constructed with their own words.

Exactly what visiting artists are expecting from the city is uncertain. The expanse, of late, looks to those on the outside like a boiling caldron--as complex as it is endless, and far too big to fit on one page. Poet Clinton looks forward to seeing how the discussion will all take shape from ground up.

“The city has become more angry and more dangerous,” she says. “And that’s balanced with the wealth and decadence. It keeps me looking at . . . the strength of the human spirit to recover. The multicultural force feeds my hope.”

Clinton writes, she says, to forge a connection between human beings in a city that has uncertain borders. But, she points out, explicating the city is not part of her plans.

“I don’t think my dialogue will center around L.A.,” or for that matter, she adds, around the level of critical debate. Clinton instead will explore her current passions within the context of liberation, with multiculturalism and gay-lesbian issues at the forefront. “My work believes in the integrity of the human being in the face of this brutal machinery. We need to take risks and move into experimental prose and poetry and try to find the urban rhythms inside of L.A.”

This old battle of regional one-upmanship and L.A.’s worth within a larger arena saps creative strength, writers believe. Debating whether or not Los Angeles is big enough to play hardball is a moot point. It’s time writers are allowed to free themselves to simply believe--and just play.

“I really believe artists have these social and political responsibilities,” says poet and festival participant Naomi Quinonez. Although she has been called an “urban lyricist,” there is nothing superficial about the beauty of her work.

“I’m not from the art-for-art’s-sake school. I see myself as a cultural worker, and artists have definite talents, gifts and skills. We need to be able to shed light on the contradictions and problems in society,” says Quinonez, who was born in El Sereno and now lives in Alhambra.

“I really find that being part of a program like this is one way to fulfill a social responsibility. It breaks down the wall between the audience and the artist and allows for a more sincere interaction. Being an artist has its privileges--not many, definitely not monetary, but other, greater ones.”

Is the ultimate goal to come away with a specific notion about what an “L.A. writer” is? Or that this convergence of writers at the events’ conclusion might be dubbed a new “movement” in search of a name?

“I hope not,” Wolverton says, acknowledging the wild mix of styles and cultures that run like a current through the city. “I would like to see L.A. writers get more respect, and get more national visibility, but we could only be impoverished by the notion of what an ‘L.A. writer’ might be.”