About the Bureau

Executive Director Joseph Mosconi

Co-Director Ivanna Baranova

Board of Directors Andrew Maxwell, Joseph Mosconi, Rita Gonzalez, Ivanna Baranova, Hedi El Kholti, Sophia Le Fraga, David Horvitz

The Poetic Research Bureau is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization

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directors@poeticresearch.com

The Poetic Research Bureau (PRB) is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit literary organization founded in 2000. For over 25 years, we have cultivated a space for language-centered inquiry, expanding access to literary arts by supporting emerging and contemporary writers through readings, performances, workshops, screenings, publication, and an active archive.

We champion the full spectrum of poetic practice: emerging, under-resourced artists; established, institutionally-backed writers and publishers; and experimental, independently-run projects that represent what's most alive in contemporary literature. The Bureau advocates for intellectual and material resource-sharing. We value artistic experiment and archival research equally, as well as translation and critical cultural engagement. By centering marginalized and polemical creative expression, we seek to democratize access to literary culture and sustain conditions for meaningful dialogue across diverse communities.

The PRB also serves as the irregular literary umbrella for projects such as literary newsletter Garden Rumours; Make Now Books, a small poetry press edited by Ara Shirinyan; and archival poetry journals The Germ (1997-2005), edited by Andrew Maxwell and Macgregor Card, and Area Sneaks (2007-2013), edited by Rita Gonzalez and Joseph Mosconi.

As a research bloc, the Bureau attempts to cultivate composition, publication and distribution strategies that enlarge the public domain. It favors appropriations, impersonations, 'compost' poetries, belated conversations, unprintable jokes and doodles, historical thefts and pastiche. The publication emphasis is on ephemeral works, short-run magazines and folios, short-lived reprints and excerpts in print-on-demand formats.

The Poetic Research Bureau is a founding and resident member of 2220 Arts + Archives on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles.