International Poetry Festival - January 10, 2014 at the Sunland-Tujunga Library

FOOTHILLS  POETRY  FESTIVAL

     LET'S  CELEBRATE  THE  NEW  YEAR  WITH  POETRY  IN  MYRIAD  LANGUAGES

                                                            
CELEBREMOS  LA  POESIA  EN  EL  NUEVO AÑO  CON  UNA  MIRÍADA  DE  LENGUAJES

    WHERE?     

SUNLAND-TUJUNGA  LIBRARY,   

7771  FOOTHILL  BLVD.  TUJUNGA

    WHEN?        

SATURDAY, JANUARY  10, 2015,  3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

WHAT?   

CELEBRATE  WITH  US  THE MANY 

POETIC  LANGUAGES  IN  OUR COMMUNITIES

WHAT ELSE? 

FROM  POLISH, VIETNAMESE, SPANISH, ARMENIAN,  RUSSIAN, SERBIAN  INTO  ENGLISH

REFRESHMENTS  PROVIDED  BY  THE  FRIENDS  OF THE  SUNLAND-TUJUNGA PUBLIC  LIBRARY. THIS EVENT IS COORDINATED  AND  HOSTED  BY  ELSA  FRAUSTO,  POET  LAUREATE  OF  SUNLAND - TUJUNGA  2014-2016.

Elsa S. Frausto

Elsa S. Frausto is a bilingual poet (Argentina). Her work has appeared in La Porte des Poetes, la-luciérnaga.com, palabrabierta.com, Poets on Site, Chuparosa Poets Anthologies and many other publications. Currently, she is Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga 2014-2016 and is enjoying the readings and meeting people who call the Foothills home. She dedicates this Poetry Festival to everybody who calls poetry their home wherever they may live. Read more: Mapping the Artist Interview. 


Bridge

Reading the dictionary
Fiction/nonfiction
Past/Present
Future in the i
Of inchoate
And the r of reality
My own, yours
All a fiction
Or non


Puente

Leo el diccionario
Ficción/Hechos
Presente/Pasado
Futuro en la i
De indefinido
Y la r de realidad
La mía, la tuya
Todo una ficción
O no


Night is long.

Pen is too heavy.
Paper too white.
Crows caw something
in their unwritten language,
break the length of their life
into notes.
Mine stop somewhere
between their birth
and their wonder.


La noche es larga.

La pluma tan pesada.
El papel demasiado blanco.
Las ranas croan algo
en su lenguaje no escrito,
rompen el largo de su vida
en notas.
Las mías paran en algun lugar
entre su nacimiento
y la maravilla.

Gloria Enedina Alvarez (will not present)

Gloria Enedina Alvarez is a Chicana poet/intermedia artist, playwright, librettist, literary translator and curator, presently  teaches creative writing and works as a consultant in public schools, universities, libraries, museums, art centers, and her literary/artistic efforts have been recognized by the CAC, National Endowment for the Arts, Cultural Affairs Department, City of L.A., COLA Award, Poets & Writers, Inc., among others. She has published and read widely in the U.S., Latin America and Europe and her plays and librettos for opera, Los Biombos,  Cuento de un Soldado/Story of a Soldier, El Niño, have been produced  internationally. Her books of poetry in English and Spanish include La Excusa/The Excuse and Emerging en un Mar De Olanes, along with publication in various anthologies and numerous periodicals.

Due to an emergency travel, Gloria Enedina Alvarez will not participate in this event.

Teresa Mei Chuc

Author of two poetry books, Red Thread (Fithian Press, 2012) and Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing, 2014), Teresa Mei Chuc was born in Saigon, Vietnam and immigrated to the U.S. under political asylum with her mother and brother shortly after the Vietnam War while her father remained in a Vietcong "reeducation" camp for nine years. Her poetry appears in journals such as EarthSpeak Magazine, The Good Men Project, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Hypothetical Review, Kyoto Journal, The Prose-Poem Project, The National Poetry Review, Rattle, Verse Daily and in anthologies such as New Poets of the American West (Many Voices Press, 2010), With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century (West End Press, 2014), and Mo’ Joe (Beatlick Press, 2014). Teresa’s poetry is forthcoming in the anthology, Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees. 

Mira N. Matarić

Mira N. Matarić is an internationally awarded writer, translator and educator, a bilingual author of poetry and prose, with 37 books. She is a world traveler and a builder of cultural bridges, spreading peace through enlightenment.

Shahé Mankerian

Shahé Mankerian's most recent manuscript, History of Forgetfulness, has been a finalist at four prestigious competitions: the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, the 2103 Bibby First Book Competition, the Quercus Review Press, Fall Poetry Book Award, 2013, and the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Mizna. 

Maja Trochimczyk

A Polish poet writes Japanese poems in English in California, writes poems for her Hungarian friend's art inspired by an Italian opera, writes for her friends in Sunland-Tujunga... Can you be more multi-cultural than that? It used to be called "cosmopolitan" before nationalism changed this word into a slur. Then it became "universal" - or "globalized" - but is first-person poetry ever that? A part of the cosmos? Maybe. The human family? - Yes, as we all are...  www.trochimczyk.net; Mapping the Artist Interview

Many thanks for your beautiful poetry and continued support 

and participation in helping build a community of poets 

right here in the Foothills of Sunland-Tujunga! 

 We are looking forward to another year of poetry with all of you.

Our next event is on Sunday, January 25, 2015, 4:30-6:30 p.m., at Bolton Hall Museum, 10110 Commerce Ave., Tujunga, CA  91042.  The featured poets for this event will be Teresa Mei Chuc and Ross Canton.

Warmest Greetings this Holiday Season 

and a Happy New Year 2015!

Village Poets Planning Group

Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Maja Trochimczyk, 

Dorothy Skiles and Elsa Frausto

Sharmagne Leland St. John - September 23, 2012 at Bolton Hall

We are thrilled to welcome the wonderful Native American poet Sharmagne Leland St.John as Featured Poet of the Village Poets Monthly Reading at Bolton Hall Museum on September 23, 2012 at 4:30 p.m.  The event also includes an open mike for poets and refreshments served courtesy of Marlene Hitt and Mari Werner. A hat will be passed to collect funding for the hall's renovations. The Bolton Hall is located on Commerce Avenue in Tujunga California  and it is hard to miss - the only building of river-stones among a sea of stucco. 

 

Sharmagne Leland-St. John, 5 time Pushcart Prize nominee, is a Native American poet, concert performer, lyricist, artist, and film maker. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the poetry e-zine Quill and Parchment.com. Sharmagne spends time between her home in the Hollywood Hills, in California and her fly fishing lodge on the Stillaguamish River in the Pacific Northtwest.  She is the founder of fogdog poetry in Arlington, WA and tours the United States, Canada, and England, as a performance poet.

 

She is widely anthologised and her poetry and short stories appear as well in many  on-line literary journals.  She has published 4 books of poetry  Unsung Songs (2003),  Silver Tears and Time (2005), Contingencies (2008),  La Kalima (2010), and co-authored a book on film production design. Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (Greenwood/Praeger 2006). Sharmagne is co-editor of Cradle Songs: An Anthology of Poems on Motherhood (2012).

 

_________________________________________

 

EL NORTE

 

El Norte.

A prayer upon her brown lips.

 

El Norte.

A dream growing like

plumeria blossoms from

empty chambers in

her heart.

 

In El Norte

she can make a decent wage.

Her children will not go to bed hungry.

She quits her job at the plantation,

kisses her children’s warm cheeks

as they sleep;

says goodbye to Columbia.

 

The Rio Grande behind her,

she now mops my neighbours’ floors,

scrubs their  toilets

for ten bucks an hour.

 

By the time she pays rent for her room,

buys bus tokens, and junk food

there is little left to send home.

Her children grow up without her.

Abuelita sends black and white photographs.

The little one is still frail and thin.

 

El Norte

The Land of Milk and Honey…

The Promised Land he believes in.

He’ll go on ahead,

send for his children one by one;

then his wife and the baby.

 

Under the sweltering

San Fernando Valley sun

he pushes the market basket

as he picks through

the neighbourhood trash;

for glass and aluminum

to recycle for pennies.

Surely his job teaching 

the village children their ABCs

was better than this.

 

In the marketplace in El Salvador

his wife almost forgets she is married.

The man with the gold tooth

smiles at her as he wraps the fish

in newspaper…

adding an extra piece now and then.

 

She misses her husband,

but has nothing to confess to the priest

as he leans in closer

to hear her sins.