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Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Lois P. Jones and Alice Pero Co-feature at Bolton Hall Museum on April 24, 2016


Village Poets present its Monthly Poetry Reading featuring Alice Pero and Lois P. Jones at 

Bolton Hall Museum, 
10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042 
on Sunday, April 24, 2016 at 4:30 p.m.  

 There will be two sections of Open Mike for guest poets and refreshments will be served. The MAC is the historic home of California Poet Laureate, writer and politician John Steven McGroarty (1862-1944) that was donated to the City of Los Angeles and is managed by a nonprofit organization as a cultural center serving local community.
ALICE PERO
Alice Pero

  Alice Pero was born in New York City, the child of a celebrated electrical engineer and a housewife/editor who loved to play the piano. Pero graduated from The Putney School in Vermont and The Manhattan School of Music in New York City after also attending The Indiana School of Music. She received dance training at the Martha Graham School in New York. 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 the founder of the chamber music group, “Windsong 2.”

 She is a member of the California Poets in the Schools and teaches poetry to children throughout the Los Angeles area. Pero founded the celebrated “Moonday” reading series in 2002, which continues its successful run, now at The Flintridge Bookstore in La Cañada, CA. Moonday is co-produced by  poet, Lois P. Jones.  Pero lives on the edge of a Southland desert wash with her husband, Dennis.  She has two grown children, Sky and Amy, and four grandchildren. www.alicepero.com




ONE BAG

 If I could put all that I owned in one bag
I would place one guitar
and I can't even play
I would put the sensation of your smile
the memory of that child sitting on the edge of a chair
with an ice cream cone, dripping
I'd put the arrogance of a Spanish dancer's arched back
seven flute tones before they disappeared in the air
a hundred blank pages
I'd put the poem that would win your hear (unthinkable joy)
I'd put a map of places to place our dreams (inexhaustible)
I'd put points to place distances to own
all the future places to place
as many bags as I wanted

 ****

 DOWN THE BALUSTRADE

 Cascading down the balustrade
careening around the corner
caroming from wall to wall
crinkling up and straightening out again
your smile finally did a dance
that landed right in the middle
of mine.

 ***

 THE CURTAINS

 This morning I tried to squeeze those white
curtains blue with my wishing eye
The white curtains fluttered in the breeze
morning sent in the window
My blue wish didn't die,
but drifted downstairs
A little boy cried for a blue balloon
lost in the wind.
***

 Poems from Thawed Stars by Alice Pero (c) 1999, copyright renewed 2016.


Poets at McGroarty Arts Center: Maja Trochimczyk, Susan Rogers, 

Lois P. Jones, Sonya Sabanac, Mira Mataric, Joe DeCenzo, Dorothy Skiles and Marlene Hitt.







LOIS P. JONES

 Lois P. Jones has work published or forthcoming in Poetic Diversity and Cultural Weekly, as well as several anthologies including The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear Publishing), Wide Awake: Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond (The Pacific Coast Poetry Series) edited by Suzanne Lummis, 30 Days (Tupelo Press), and Good-Bye Mexico (Texas Review Press). Some publications include Narrative,American Poetry Journal, One (Jacar Press), Tupelo Quarterly, The Warwick Review, Tiferet, Cider Press Review, Askew and other journals in the U.S. and abroad. 

 Lois’s poems have won honors under judges Kwame Dawes, Fiona Sampson, Ruth Ellen Kocher and others. New Yorker staff writer, Dana Goodyear selected “Ouija” as Poem of the Year in the 2010 competition sponsored by Web del Sol. She is the winner of the 2012 Tiferet Poetry Prize and the 2012 Liakoura Prize and a multiple Pushcart nominee. Her poem was long-listed in the 2015 National Poetry Competition organized by The Poetry Society. 
Lois is Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal, host of KPFK’s Poets Café (Pacifica Radio) and co-host of Moonday Poetry. She is an interviewer at American Micro Reviews and Interviews and is currently co-editing two collections for Glass Lyre Press: the Aeolian Harp and Peace anthologies.

Kyoto Journal - http://www.kyotojournal.org/

 Red Horse
No one understood this blood run
to the moon, this blaze

of you, red horse in a swollen sky.
How you turned loose

like a fistful of fire ants.
How your temper could burn

a field when there was too much
to drink. There were days we’d spread

the blanket on the grasses
near the sycamores and let the desert

air run through us,
let the sage burn our nostrils

as we sipped a silky rioja.
A wine you liked to translate,

as you decoded everything beautiful.
Your lips full and slightly curled

siempre, siempre: jardin de mi agonia,
tu cuerpo fugitivo para siempre,

always, always: garden of my last breath,
your body escaped forever,

Lorca in his red shoes
lighting our tongues, lifting

our hips until the sun
turned poppy and burst.


 (C) by Lois P. Jones


FAREWELL TO ENDRE DOBAY

Jean Sudbury, Kathabela Wilson, Endre Dobay, and Maja Trochimczyk, 2013 
Village Poets  said their farewells to Endre Dobay, husband of artist Susan Dobay, whose work on video interpretations of operas through art was presented at our events.  The Celebration of Life event was held on March 12, 2016 at the Scenic Art Gallery in Monrovia, and many poets read their verse inspired by and dedicated to Endre. A mechanical engineer,   a  family man,  and a supporter of all art forms which he respected and loved , with his wife artist Susan he was  the proprietor of the Scenic Drive Gallery.

The online documentation of these tributes includes a video assemblage of photos, a photo album and a series of poems, some reprinted on the Poetry Laurels blog by Maja Trochimczyk:
Susan Dobay (center) with Maja Trochimczyk (L) and Mira Mataric (R)
Photo by Penelope Torribio


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