Pamela Shea and Lois P. Jones Feature at Bolton Hall Museum, August 27, 2017

Returning home has never felt better. After a brief detour to the Montrose Library featuring Dorothy Skiles and Marlene Hitt on July 22, with participation of State Senator Anthony Portantino (see the photos below), we are returning to our home at the Bolton Hall Museum for the August 27, 2017 reading that will feature Pamela Shea, the newest Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (the eight!) and the eminent and amazing poet Lois P. Jones, presenting her award-winning book, Night Ladder.
 

The reading will start at 4:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, at  10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, CA 91042, and will include two segments of open mike and refreshments.

 

 

PAMELA SHEA

Pamela Shea has lived in the Sunland-Tujunga area for nearly 40 years. Her poems appeared numerous times in the local Voice of the Village newspaper, as well as in the monthly newsletter for Salem Lutheran Church in Glendale and the fundraising literature for the Health Ministries of the Foothills. She was a featured reader at the Shouting Coyote Performing Festival in 2004 and also led a workshop at that event on the Poetry of Nature. Since then, she participated in many readings with the Wide Open Readers, led by Elsa Frausto, and the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga at Bolton Hall Museum.

Her extensive record of community service includes many endeavors, such as volunteering for the Verdugo Hills Family YMCA’s annual Current Campaign Support Fund Drive for several years. She was also a member of VHY’s Senior Advisory Committee. She started a poetry group that met weekly at VHY as well as served as a board member for two terms (six years of service) for the Health Ministries of the Foothills. Since being inducted as Poet Laureate in April 2017, Pam has enjoyed reading at a variety of local venues for special events and fundraisers and looks forward to many more such opportunities.

Strawberry Full Moon. Photo by Pamela Shea

 

Strawberry Full Moon

A clear early morn

Brings spring strawberry full moon

Hibiscus leans in

For a sweet kiss from afar

Tree branches and leaves join in

Heavenly cosmic embrace

6/9/17 – Pamela Shea

 

Pamela Shea in the Independence Day Parade.

Garden Spider/Two Webs

Garden spider’s web
Enticingly intricate
Drawing deep within
Seducing and then stinging
Path into oblivion

Human world wide web

Networks, systems, internet
Information lures
Its complexity coaxes
Wooing into timelessness

 

 5/30/2017 – Pamela Shea

 

 

Lois P. Jones. Photo by Susan Rogers

LOIS P. JONES

 

Lois P. Jones is a recipient of the 2016 Bristol Poetry Prize, 2012 Tiferet Poetry Prize and the 2012 Liakoura Prize and was shortlisted for the 2016 Bridport Prize in poetry.  Her poetry has been published in anthologies including The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear Publishing), Wide Awake: Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond (The Pacific Coast Poetry Series), 30 Days (Tupelo Press) and Good-Bye Mexico (Texas Review Press).  Her poetry collection Night Ladder is the winner of the 2017 Best Book Award from the Glass Lyre Press.

She has work published or forthcoming in Tinderbox Poetry Journal,  Narrative, American Poetry Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, The Warwick Review, Cider Press Review and others.  She is Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal, host of KPFK’s Poets Café (Pacifica Radio) and co-hosts Moonday Poetry.  Lois’s poems have won honors under judges Fiona Sampson, Kwame Dawes, Ruth Ellen Kocher and others.

 

 

Links to poems:

Poems and Pictures - Lois P. Jones

 

Poems and Pictures - Lois P. Jones

 

https://www.culturalweekly.com/lois-p-jones-two-poems/

 

A video with poem

Samsara

Samsara A film by Dean Pasch Poem and poem's recital by Lois P. Jones Music by Falter Bramnk - remix of Edgar Var...

 

 Music for the reading, in between the features and to close the event, will be provided by singer-songwriter from the Los Angeles area, Jeremy But who accompanies himself on an acoustic guitar.  You can listen to three sample songs here:

http://www.numberonemusic.com/jeremybut/songs
 

Here are some photos from Montrose Library from the Village Poets reading that featured Marlene Hitt and Dorothy Skiles, on July 22, 2017.
 

 

Dorothy Skiles & Marlene Hitt, Saturday, 22 July 2017, Montrose - and Parade Photos with Pam

Due to an exhibition being held at Bolton Hall Museum, Village Poets' July meeting has been moved to nearby Montrose where the Library will present Dorothy Skiles and Marlene Hitt, in a double feature of Village Poets. The flyer for the event was produced by the Montrose Library, located at 2465 Honolulu Avenue, Montrose where the Village Poets reading will start at 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 22, 2017.  Two segments of open mike will also be available for those who wish to read their poems. See you all there!

Over the last eighteen years, Dorothy has been involved in the local poetry scene and her poems have appeared in a variety of community publications. She served as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga from 2012 to 2014 and since 2010, has been a member of the Village Poets of Sunland-TujungaPlanning Group who sponsor a well-established Monthly Poetry Series in the foothills.

Her chapbooks include:The Sidewalk Gallery (1979), Ear to Earth (1996), Spine Flower Blues (1999) - a collaborative work by the Chuparosa Writers, and Riddle in the Rain (2003) –a collaborative work with Marlene Hitt.

Dorothy Skiles and Joe DeCenzo at the Parade 2014

Dorothy’s poems appear in Meditation on Divine Names, edited by Maja Trochimczyk, Moonrise Press 2012, and From Benicia With Love, Edited by Don Peery, Accent Digital Publishing, Redding CA 2013. In July 2015, she was featured in Colorado Boulevard.net in Pasadena, Mapping the Artist - Dorothy Skiles by Kathabela Wilson.Her poems also appear in the Altadena Poetry Review - Anthology 2016, edited by Thelma T. Reyna, Golden Foothill Press,2016. Most recently, her poems were published in the Altadena Poetry Review -  Anthology 2017, edited by Elline Lipkin and Pauli Dutton, Altadena Library District, 2017.

Marlene and Lloyd Hitt, Grand Marshalls of the Independence Day Parade, 2017.

Marlene Hitt is a Los Angeles poet, writer and retired educator with local history as an avocation. She has served for many years as Archivist, Museum Director and Historian at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga. She is a native Californian and a graduate of Occidental College. She also studied at CSUN, USC, UCLA, Glendale College and Trinity College in Ireland. As a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland for nearly 30 years, she has worked with this small group of poets from whom has sprung readings at the local library, the Poet Laureate Program of Sunland-Tujunga, and the currently popular Village Poets. Her poetry received several first place prizes in annual competitions of the Women’s Club, San Fernando Valley, and many awards from the John Steven McGroarty Chapter of the California Chaparral Poets. Congressman Adam Schiff declared Marlene Hitt to be the Woman of the Year 2016 and her name was entered into the Congressional Record.

Her work appeared in Psychopoetica (UK), Chupa Rosa Diaries of the Chupa Rosa Writers, Sunland (2001-2003), Glendale College’s Eclipse anthologies, two Moonrise Press anthologies, Chopin With Cherries (2010) and Meditations on Divine Names (2012),Sometimes in the Open, a collection of verse by California Poets Laureate, and The Coiled Serpent, anthology of Los Angeles poets, edited by Poet Laureate, Luis Rodriguez (2016). She published chapbooks Sad with Cinnamon, Mint Leaves, and Bent Grass (all in 2001), as well as Riddle in the Rain with Dorothy Skiles, a stack of poetry booklets for friends and family, and most recently a critically acclaimed poetry volume, Clocks and Water Drops (Moonrise Press, 2015). 

More information: 

• Clocks and Water Drops: http://www.moonrisepress.com/clocks-and-water-drops-by-marlene-hitt.html
• Blog about Clocks and Water Drops: http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2015/01/
• Interview on Colorado Blvd. Blog: https://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-marlene-hitt/ 

ARRIVAL

Please, come home.

Walk into the door of the kitchen

where stew and wheaten bread

steam, where a fire warms.

Your father will tune the strings,

unwrap the bohdran.

I will uncover the harp.

The stew will simmer.

With hands wiped on my apron

I will open my arms

to you, my firstborn child

so long traveling. Your sisters 

will dance. The old ones will smile

through brown, gapped teeth,

will smile blue into your eyes.

Wrapped around you, the old songs,

the scent of turf fire, the smell

of our own wool and you will sing.

While you sleep

I will wrap around you a woven shawl

to shield you. Please come home

to bleating lambs,

to the resting place of love.

Marlene Hitt, published in Clocks and Water Drops (2015)  

ISBN 978-0-9819693-5-0

LOVE MENDED

That old threadbare word – love

flows in a fabric patterned

with shades of crimson colors,

whispers of mauve and the yellow of dry sun.

Chopin wove love into the air,

Monet stroked it onto canvas.

That word so often patched

nearly falls apart, its meaning frayed –

until a newborn cries 

or a daughter becomes a bride,

until the lace of fifty years together

fully knits. Love unravels

until a friend perceives and cherishes,

until there is an ear ready to listen, 

a shoulder to cry on. Love is repaired

with the consecration of all the threads.

Then, there is delight in love’s stitching,

the worn word renewed

into the One Love.

Mended.

Marlene Hitt, published in Clocks and Water Drops, 2015

VILLAGE POETS AT THE PARADE 2017

Marlene  and Lloyd Hitt were Grand Marshalls. Photo by Bill Skiles.

Pam Shea, Poet Laureate was the Star!

The Poets had a banner, carried by Spiderman and Auntie Sam.

The team is getting ready, minus the photographer and driver.

The hood was covered in stars, stripes and flowers.

Everyone wore their stars and stripes...

The Poet Laureate dressed up as Betsy Ross.

Joe DeCenzo was the driver and had lots of fun! 

The car of poets drove on...

Having fun in the sun! With stars all over (Maja)