Danielle P. Williams at Juneteenth Poetry Reading in Venice, CA

Date: Friday, June 19, 2026

When: 7 p.m., PDT

Where: Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA

This Juneteenth Poetry Reading is a celebration for Chamorrita Song by Danielle P. Williams and Audrey Shipp’s new collection Poetry /Poes´ía/ Poésie in AfroDiaspora. The poets will be joined in The Wanda Coleman Theater by guests Maestro Gamin, Nicole J. Evans, and Naomi Nightingale. Reception and book signings to follow in the Scott Wannberg Bookstore & Lounge. The event is in person, or live on Beyond Baroque’s Youtube channel.

Tickets are $0-$12, reserve your ticket here.

About the book:

For poet and spoken-word artist Danielle P. Williams, Kantan Chamorrita is more than just the ancient craft of Chamorro folk song. It is also a return and a homecoming. This impromptu style of communal call-and response performance art forms the spokes for Williams’s debut collection.

Rooted in oral tradition, Chamorrita Song pays homage to Black and Chamorro cultures, honoring the artistic expressions that these communities have created to reconcile lifetimes of imposed trauma. Bearing witness to these many narratives, Williams intertwines spoken word poetry and gospel music with Chamorro storytelling, weaving together the nuanced histories of queer, Black, and Indigenous existence and literature. Here Williams reveals capacious contemporary forms that speak to the future as well as to the past, and that further ground lineages in homelands, finding strength and beauty in collective pain and triumph. These poems transform and spread the messages of those long silenced. They act as song and prayer.