Alice Pero - Featured Poet on June 26, 2011

The next monthly Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall Museum, Tujunga, on June 26, 2011 at 4:30 p.m. will feature our wonderful neighbor, poet and musician, Alice Pero. A co-founder and host of Moonday Poetry readings at Pacific Palisades, she recently started Moonday East in nearby La Canada Flintridge, but she is our neighbor in Sunland.

Alice Pero was born in New York City, the child of an electrical engineer and a housewife/editor. She graduated from Putney School in Vermont and The Manhattan School of Music in New York City. She received dance training at the Martha Graham School in New York and from many private teachers and studied flute with Harold Bennett. While a student she played with the National Orchestral Association in New York City and currently she is playing chamber music concerts, after a long hiatus from the flute. She is a member of the California Poets in the Schools, and was a workshop leader for the New York City Ballet Education Department Poetry Project for many years. Pero is also a teacher of poetry to grade school children and she has developed a unique curriculum that utilizes her experience with music. In October 2002, Pero founded a poetry reading, Moonday, at Village Books in Pacific Palisades, California, which she co-produces with Lois P. Jones. She recently inaugurated the Moonday East series at the newly constructed Flintridge Bookstore in La Cañada, while continuing the popular Pacific Palisades readings.

Pero discovered poetry after studying rhythm with the music educator, Jamie Faunt, and has been writing poetry seriously for 29 years. She has done many featured readings in New York and Los Angeles and has been published in over 60 small magazines and anthologies, including: North American Review, 13th Moon, The Alembic, North Dakota Quarterly, RiverSedge, New Delta Review, The Distillery, Lullwater Review, Poet Lore, River Oak Review, The Cape Rock, Fox Cry Review, The Griffin, G.W. Review, Main Street Rag, Quercus Review, Oregon East, The Pikeville Review, Xavier Review, Studio One, Three Mile Harbor, Salonika, San Gabriel Valley Quarterly, Soundings East, Spillway, Sulphur River Literary Review, Minnetonka Review, Word Thursday, Très diverse-city, Valley Contemporary Poetry Anthology, Albatross, Lummox, Bayou, Carquinez Poetry Review, Cadillac Cicatrix, California Quarterly, Cairn, The Old Red Kimono, and Sanskrit.

Her first book of poetry, Thawed Stars, published in 1999, was hailed by Kenneth Koch as having “clarity and surprises.”

Lyn Lifshin has said: "Alice Pero's poems are deliciously open, brimming with leaps, twists and surprises, often joyful and fizzy as a fireworks display." The book is available on Amazon.com:
Thawed Stars.

“The romance of discovery, the radiant brilliance, the surprise and laughter are all here in Alice Pero's deeply intelligent insights into the edge of things." ~The Book Reader~
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RUMORS

They say that soon
the sun will be swept
into the sea
The moon will visit me
and tell me
how to rescue the sun

but I know these are only rumors

The sea keeps secrets in violent waves
and leaves me wondering

The sun burns alone
in scorching silence

but only I live to dream
_________________________

from Thawed Stars

© 2011 Alice Pero

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The monthly Village Poets readings at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga have been blessed with a number of impressive guest poets and regular visitors reading their work at the Open Mike segments. We are looking forward to hearing Alice's poetry next month.

Cindy Rinne's recent reading at Bolton Hall (May 22) was a popular success, not only because of the beauty and inspiration of her poetry, with a deeply personal, reflective tone, focusing on the beauty of nature. Cindy brought and shared with us a set of wonderful fiber art pieces, that she designed and made from pieces of fabric, embroidery, inscriptions of poems, etc. I particularly loved the beautiful blue piece with small houses on it, and the story about her house that burned down. We live in the wildfire zone, close to the mountains that are as beautiful as they are dangerous...

At the end of Cindy's "Earth Voices" presentation of her poetry and fiber art, the audience "dressed up" in her artwork and posed together. She wrote about this experience on her blog: FiberVerse. I took a couple of photos; here's a group shot of all poets holding Cindy's fiber artwork. Thank you, Cindy!



L to R: Jim Gibson, Dorothy Skiles, Marlene Hitt, Lloyd Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, xx, Lois P. Jones, Russell Salamon, Beverly Collins, Marcia Behar, Mari Werner, Deborah Marlow, and (seated) Maja Trochimczyk, xx, Barbara Brolin, Cindy Rinne and Mira Mataric.