CANCELED POETRY SERIES WILL RESUME AT MUSEUM

A series of Orange County poetry readings canceled last fall by the management of the Costa Mesa bookstore where the readings had been held will resume in a new setting--the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.

The first in the proposed monthly series, entitled “Rookery Readings at Bowers Museum,” will be April 16. It will feature UC Irvine literature professor and poet Robert Peters, who will perform his “Ludwig, Mad King of Bavaria” presentation.

The series, which had been presented for 18 months at Upstart Crow and Co., a bookstore-restaurant in Costa Mesa, was terminated in September because the bookstore’s management objected to the sexually explicit language used by some poets. The readings were not secluded from the store’s coffee shop, and some patrons, who had not come into the shop to hear poetry, were offended by the language.

The Bowers series will be sponsored by the Medina Foundation, a nonprofit literary and educational organization formed recently by several of the principals of the Santa Ana-based Electrum poetry magazine, which sponsored the Upstart Crow readings.

According to Roger Suva, managing editor of Electrum magazine and coordinator of the poetry series, the events at Bowers will encompass music and visual art as well as poetry. During the summer, Mills House Art Gallery in Garden Grove will host the readings.