Village Poets and Guests in the Independence Day Parade 2019

Village Poets at the 2019 Independence Day Parade

Look for the Poets' Convertible in this year's Independence Day Parade of Sunland-Tujunga on July 4, 2019 starting at 10 am. The Parade goes down Foothill Blvd, from Mt. Gleason to Sunland Park. Below are biographies of the poets and guests who will appear in the parade this year. Riding in the Poets' Convertible will be poet Susan Rogers, mezzosoprano Katarzyna Sadej, artist Antonina Konopelska, President of Polish American Film Society Elizabeth Kanski, and scientist Barbara Nowicki.  Walking the route with the Village Poets banner will be Joe DeCenzo with Josephine.  Maja Trochimczyk will give out postcards with poems, including those posted on her blog: http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2018/07/independence-or-interdependence.html

Joe DeCenzo

JOE DECENZO grew up in Los Angeles and majored in theater and English Literature. From 2004-06 he served as the third poet laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. He produced the Shouting Coyote performing arts festival and was a Department of Cultural Affairs grant recipient. His published works include The Ballad of Alley and Hawk and the Study Guide and Poetry Primer. His poems also appeared in Meditations on Divine Names anthology (2012) and on Village Poets blog. Joe currently serves on the planning committee for the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga and as Chair of Poet Laureate Search Committee. In addition to his volunteer work for Village Poets, Joe DeCenzo was involved in developing or creating: 2002 Shouting Coyote Poetry Festival, 2004 Shouting Coyote Performing Arts Festival, 2005 Mother's Day Brunch at Bolton Hall, and 2006 Commerce Ave Fair/Shouting Coyote Poetry Slam.

SUSAN ROGERS considers poetry a vehicle for light and a tool for the exchange of positive energy. She is a practitioner of Sukyo Mahikari— a spiritual practice that promotes positive thoughts, words and action. www.sukyomahikari.org  She is also a photographer and a licensed attorney. Her poems were part of the 2009 event “Celebrating Women, Body, Mind and Spirit,” the 2010 Valentine Peace Project, the 2010 event “Poetry: A Garden to the Human Spirit” held at Cypress College in Cypress, California, the 2010 Poem Flag Installation by Global Alchemy Forum and have been performed at museums and galleries in Southern California. In 2010 she was Writer of the Week for “Words, Spirit and You,” sponsored by Tiferet Journal. One of her haiku won Honorable Mention in the 2010 Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest sponsored by the Yuki Teikei Society of Haiku. She was a featured poet at the Moonday Poetry Reading Series in 2011. Her work can be found in the book Chopin and Cherries, numerous journals, anthologies and chapbooks and can be heard online or in person as part of the audio tour for the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California. She was recently interviewed by Lois P. Jones for KPFK’s Poets Café. She appeared at Village Poets readings as part of the Westside Women Writers.

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2015/07/westside-women-writers-at-eastside.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2018/11/grateful-conversations-krak-poetry.html

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK, Ph.D.,  is a Polish American poet, music   historian,   photographer, and author of seven books of poetry, including Miriam’s Iris (2008), Slicing the Bread (2014), The Rainy Bread (2016), Into Light (2016), and two anthologies, Chopin with Cherries (2010) and Meditations on Divine Names (2012). Her poems appeared in such journals as the California Quarterly, Cosmopolitan Review, Ekphrasis Journal, Epiphany Magazine, Lily Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, Lummox Journal, Quill and Parchment, Pirene's Fountain, Poezja Dzisiaj, The Scream Online, Spectrum and anthologies by Poets on Site, Southern California Haiku Study Group, and others. As a Polish music historian, she published seven books, most recently Górecki in Context: Essays on Music  (2017) and Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide (rev. ed., 2015). A former Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, she is the founder of Moonrise Press, President of California State Poetry Society (and member of Editorial Board of the California Quarterly), Board Secretary and Communications Director of the Polish American Historical Association, and Senior Director of Planning at Phoenix House California. Her research studies, articles and book chapters appeared in English, Polish, and in translations in ten countries. She read papers at 90 international conferences and is a recipient of honors and awards from Polish, Canadian, and American institutions, such as the American Council of Learned Societies, the Polish Ministry of Culture, PAHA, McGill University, and the University of Southern California. Two solo exhibitions displayed her photographs of leaves and roses. 

http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2018/07/independence-or-interdependence.html

http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2011/07/joy-in-red-white-and-blue.html

ELIZABETH KANSKI, POLISH FILM FESTIVAL PRESIDENT 

Elizabeth Kanski is a translator, editor, and producer from Warsaw, Poland. For the past 10 years, she served as President of the Polish American Film Society that organizes the Annual Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles. Her credits as a producer include: Forgiveness (2008), Esther's Diary (2010) and Why Be Good? (2007). She holds an MA degree in Applied Linguistics and is a translator in Polish, English, German and Spanish. She serves as a correspondent for Polish film-related magazines and as media is attending the majority of film festivals held in Los Angeles. Former Board member of the Helena Modjeska Culture Club in Los Angeles.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3183493/ and http://www.polishfilmla.org/wocms.php?siteID=50

MARLENE HITT AT THE 2019 PARADE

Marlene rode separately in an old pickup truck, with a banner that honored the motto of the parade, by saying "From Outer Space to Inner Space" and displaying the covers of her poetry books.

VILLAGE POETS AT THE PARADE IN THE PAST

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2018/07/village-poets-bring-poetry-to.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2017/07/dorothy-skiles-marlene-hitt-saturday-22.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2017/06/independence-day-parade-and-july-22.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2013/08/jessica-wilson-and-jason-brain-co.html

Car decorated for 2017 Parade

Parade in 2017 with Pamela Shea Poet Laureate as Betty Ross

Joe DeCenzo drives the parade car, 2014

Maja Trochimczyk with daughter Ania, at the Parade, 2010

Maja Trochimczyk at the Parade 2011

Joe DeCenzo drumming at the Parade, 2015

Dorothy Skiles, Maja Trochimczyk, Marlene Hitt at the Parade, 2013

Village Poets at the Parade, 2014

Village Poets at the Parade, 2015

Joe DeCenzo at the parade in 2017

The Village Poets Banner, 2017

Lloyd and Marlene Hitt - Grand Marshals in 2017

Dorothy Skiles and Joe DeCenzo in 2015

The Poets' Convertible in 2018

Maja and a Donkey at the 2012 Parade

Village Poets Honor Marlene Hitt and Lloyd Hitt on July 28, 2019 at Bolton Hall Museum

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

Village Poets will have a very busy summer. First, we will appear in the Independence Day Parade on 4th of July 2019. Joe DeCenzo will be carrying the Village Poets banner. The Poets Convertible will include Poets Maja Trochimczyk and Susan Rogers, and friends, Elizabeth Kanski (President of the Polish American Film Society that organizes Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles) and Barbara Nowicki (volunteer for the Polish Film Festival and member of Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club).  

2017 Parade: Joe DeCenzo, Maja Trochimczyk, Dorothy Skiles

Then, on July 28, 2019 at 4:30 pm at Village Poets Monthly Reading at Bolton Hall Museum (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042) we will present the award to Dr. Lloyd Hitt and Marlene Hitt, who recently retired from their roles in the Village Poets, as co-founders of the group and organizers of monthly readings at Bolton Hall. There will be some time for open mike readers and refreshments will be served. We hope all poets that benefited from the Hitts' generosity will be able to come and thank them in person!

MARLENE HITT

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.  

Ms. Hitt, elected Woman of Achievement for year 2001, served a Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga in 1999-2001, at the turn of the century. She has published several books on local history, including Sunland-Tujunga From Village to City (Arcadia, 2000, 2005) based on columns written for the Foothill Leader, Glendale News Press, North Valley Reporter, Sentinel, and Voice of the Village newspapers since 1998. Over the years, she taught in elementary school, worked in a pharmacy, chaired committees, tap-danced, and played English handbells, autoharp and ukulele. She dedicates her successes to her husband, Lloyd, her children and grandchildren, her biggest fans.

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/ 

Clocks and Water Drops

Poetry Collection by Marlene Hitt

Published in May 2015. 118 pages.  ISBN 978-0-9819693-5-0

moonrisepress.blogspot.com

This collection of poetry is the work of Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, former Museum Director at the Bolton Hall Museum, organizer of readings, community events, editor and author. The book includes 73 poems divided into sections on: Children, Marriages, Portraits, Neighbors, Seasons, Small Things, Passages, and Farewells.  The title captures the poet's fascination with the flow of time, as relentless and powerful as drops of water that can shape rocks and move mountains. 

Clocks and Water Drops is a book of treasured gifts packed in memories and reflections as tasty as homemade bread, fanciful as a rose petal salad and healing as warm camphor oil on a child's skin. Marlene Hitts’ astute and thoughtful voice paints a world as gentle as lamb’s wool and precious as a girl’s first pony. Open this cedar chest of poems, don its knitted socks and prepare to chase the moon through love and time.  ~ Jack Cooper, Across My Silence.​

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

LLOYD HITT

Dr. William Lloyd Hitt: A Californian, born in 1932, graduate of Verdugo Hills High School, 1949; graduate of University of Southern California School of Pharmacy with a Pharm D degree, President of the School of Pharmacy;U.S. Sargent and recipient of the Purple Heart (Korean War);Pharmacist and manager of Hobers Pharmacy, Sunland, CA 1959-1995. For nine years he served as President of the Little Landers Historical Society that manages the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga.

He is President Emeritus and charter member of the Tuna Camp Coalition formed to investigate, memorialize and make public the story of the Japanese relocation camp in Tujunga which was formed to incarcerate Japanese during the three years of World War II, 1941-1943. Nancy Oda, President of Tuna Canyon Detention Camp Coalition stated about Dr. Hitt: “He told us that his motivation to make a difference came when he faced death during the Korean War and promised to make a difference if he survived. Indeed, his life has been one of service to his community as a pharmacist and activist.”

Dr. Hitt received many awards and honors for his tireless and dedicated community service, including the titles of the Grand Marshall in Sunland Tujunga’s Independence Day Parades. He belonged to poetry groups Chupa Rosa Writers and was a key member of the Village Poets, helping to organize monthly Village Poets Readings at the Bolton Hall Museum. More information about Dr. Hitt may be found on the Tuna Canyon Detention Camp Coalition site.

Maja Trochimczyk with Lloyd and Marlene Hitt, after the parade, 2017


VILLAGE POETS NEWS

The reading by Melissa Studdard was outstanding - June 23, 2019.  Here are some photos from this event. 

Melissa Studdard Featured by Village Poets at Bolton Hall Museum on June 23, 2019

The next Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, CA (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042 ) will take place on Sunday, June 23, 2019, at 4:30 pm. Our featured poet comes from afar and has incredible credentials, so we are thrilled to feature MELISSA STUDDARD. In addition to the featured poet, we also welcome open mike poets, and poetry lovers. Refreshments will be served. The George Harris  hat is passed around to collect $3 voluntary donations for the upkeep of the wonderful space. Bolton Hall Museum is Los Angeles Historical Landmark No. 2, built in 1913, and maintained by Little Landers Historical Society, a local group commemorating the settlers of the area, each of whom got a little land, hence Little Landers. 

ABOUT MELISSA STUDDARD

Melissa Studdard is the author of four books, including the poetry collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and the young adult novel Six Weeks to Yehidah. Her short writings have appeared in a wide variety of journals, magazines, blogs, and anthologies, such as The New York Times, Poetry, Psychology Today, The Guardian, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, Bettering American Poetry, and Poets & Writers. 

A short film of the title poem from I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast (by Dan Sickles of Moxie Pictures for Motionpoems) was an official selection for the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, as well as winner of the REEL Poetry Festival Audience Choice Award. Other poems have been made into car magnets, telepoem booth recordings, and Houston City Banners.

She is spending much of the summer as poet-in-residence at The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Manasota Key.

Poem 1, Originally published in Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts

Inside the beige brick house, the beige rooms


and beige-shirted people sit beautiful as unbuttered
biscuits, their awful loveliness upon me. They want me

drier than wheat and so still no marbles can roll

from my head. I want summer flashing the yard
red with begonias. I want Ladder-backed Woodpeckers

knocking at the gables, and Crepe Myrtle blossoms

blown down like hot pink cotton in a storm.
I’m embarrassing like that. A walking faux pas no one

wants to be seen with at the mall. I know love like

the arms of a cactus. I know the scent of earth revealing
her secrets after a much-needed rain. I buried

everything they told me to bury. Then, I dug it up again.

Poem 2, Originally published by Tinderbox Poetry Journal

My Kind

My life’s burning.
That’s what I mean when they ask how I am and I say
Fine.Rope-dangling, kicking-the-chair-out-from-under-me
fine; flirting-with-blades fine; looking-for-Pallas-Athena-
in-my-pancake fine (why would she visit that twerp Telemachus
and not me?) In my spare time, I’m building a death out of sad songs and leftover,
microwavable food. I’m building a life out of
sad songs, good friends, and leftover microwavable food.
It occurs to me that I may be my own soul mate. That’s how I’ve ended up
in this body alone. But science says self is not so simple.
I’m a mosaic of viruses, bacteria, and, likely, other people.
All of us making decisions together. Group hug!
I am my own kind. I’ll learn to play piano. Like Hélène Grimaud,
I’ll see blue rising from the notes. I’ll see children swinging in a park by the ocean.
The music will evoke everything. A meaningful life.
All of this inside a drop of dew. I’ll be an amateur bird watcher, a volunteer
firefighter, a gourmet chef, a great humanitarian. I’ll plant a prize-winning garden,
grow a pot farm. My hair is on fire. I’m running
out of time. Maybe I’ll learn to paint. Get
a cat or a dog. Something sweet
that likes to cuddle and craps outside the house. Something
feral and one step from wild. Something that, when the moon jumps in the lake,
will jump in after, howling, in love with the lake,
in love with the moon, in love with itself and every other
disappearing thing.
My kind.

PHOTOS FROM POETRY AND ART EVENT ON MAY 26, 2019

Photos by Kathabela Wilson and friends.