A Fire Rekindled : CalArts Poetry Reading Will Recall the Energy Generated by the Watts Writers Workshop That Emerged From the 1965 Riots

The heat of the Watts Riots burned on beyond those historic days and nights in 1965, smoldering for years afterward in a rented house on Beach Street where writers and poets gathered.

The Watts Writers Workshop was perhaps the most famous of the cultural projects that blossomed in that neighborhood after the civil unrest. It was a magnet, attracting well-known writers and a cadre of new African-American literary talent.

“Just to walk in the room--the energy in the room was enough to knock you over,” recalls Eric Priestley, 48, who was a young man at the time. The group, he said, learned “to use art forms of poetry and prose as a catharsis to channel aggression.”

The workshop faded by the early 1970s and has since fidgeted in and out of existence. But its writers remain a presence.

Wednesday afternoon, Priestley and two other alumni--Ojenke Mapenzi and Kamau Daa’ood--will read selections from their poetry at CalArts in Valencia. Also appearing will be Wendy James, a former CalArts student who has previously read around Los Angeles.

The readings are presented as part of the institute’s “Poetry Today” series. Luminaries such as Octavio Paz, Mark Strand, Gary Snyder and Diane Wakoski have visited the campus as series guests over the last 14 years.

The Watts writers reconvene on the heels of a riot similar to the one that originally brought them together. The reunion is perfectly timed, though unintentionally so.

“The odd thing is, this was in the works well before (last spring’s riots) happened,” said Jo Berryman, who teaches literature and poetry at CalArts and serves as director of the poetry series. Another Watts workshop alumnus, Quincy Troupe, appeared at the institute last year and helped her get in touch with the three who will visit Wednesday. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while,” she said.

James was included in the program because the three men wanted a new voice to accompany their performances, she said.

After his days with the workshop, Priestley went on to write a novel, “Raw Dogs,” and a nonfiction account titled “Flame and Smoke--an Authentic Account of the Watts Riots.”

Mapenzi, meanwhile, published a collection of poems, “The Mind Is a Circular Blade,” and has read at numerous colleges and bookstores. He was a founding member of Black Artists for Freedom, Liberation and Equality.

Kamau Daa’ood, who has published both prose and poetry, now serves as co-director of the World Stage, a storefront performance space in the Crenshaw District. He joined the workshop around 1967 after hearing about it on the radio.

“I was in high school, writing poetry at the time,” he recalled. What he encountered was a group that was “young and fired up. We were the equivalent of what the rap artists are today.”

The workshop had been established by Budd Schulberg, who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for “On the Waterfront.”

“I drove down to Watts after the devastation to see it for myself,” Schulberg said in a 1985 speech. “It was August of ’65 and it was like civil war in L.A.”

Three months later, he rented a house in Watts, turned it into a dormitory for members of the fledgling workshop and watched the group grow to several hundred members. Time magazine did a full-page article as the Watts writers became a hot topic.

But the workshop dwindled when Schulberg moved East in the 1970s, and has never been as strong.

Reminiscing the other day in a small park beside the Watts Towers Art Center, Priestley insisted that the arts remain vital to the African-American community.

“You may have a culture without art, but it won’t be a culture with a soul,” he said.

The months and years after the Watts Riots, he recalled, were a renaissance period for African-American arts.

“(We) had all these different places for the artists to go,” he said, mentioning a coffeehouse that offered regular readings and the famed Studio Watts, which presented dance concerts and plays. “Only place left now is the Watts Towers Arts Center.”

But the heritage of the Watts writers lives on, he says.

“The spirit of the workshop is not dead. Look at Wendy. She is living proof that it is not dead.”