The Moonrise Press team wishes everyone, especially our authors and readers, a very happy holiday season and a fantastic New Year, full of creativity and success. We hope to publish more books of poetry, music and history in the coming year.
In 2016, Moonrise Press published one book on Polish American history, "The Maska Dramatic Circle" by Phyllis Z. Budka and it already received positive reviews in the Polish American Journal, the Daily Gazette, and notices in local genealogy resources and newsletters.
We also issued two poetry books this year, and poems from both were submitted to the Pushcart Prizes 2017, with the following poems selected for recognition by the Pushcart Prizes:
These are Dr. Trochimczyk's first Pushcart Prize nominations.
We are also happy to note that Maja Trochimczyk's poetry has been recognized by the 2016 Creative Arts Prize awarded to her for the poetic achievement, with specific mentions of The Rainy Bread and Slicing the Bread, two books of poetry inspired by war-time experiences of her family, and Poles from the Kresy Borderlands area of eastern Poland (now in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine).
The award letter is copied below. Congratulations!
The Creative Arts Award will be presented to Maja Trochimczyk by PAHA President, President Grazyna Kozaczka, at the 74th Annual Meeting at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO (January 5-7, 2017). The Polish American Historical Association will also announce the winners of its other Annual Awards. The PAHA Annual Meeting will also include many scholarly presentations held in conjunction with the 131st annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.
Dr. IwonaDragKorga,
Executive
Directorof thePilsudskiInstitutein NewYork
City, has served as theChairoftheAwardsCommitteefor2017.The Awards
Reception will be held on Saturday, January 7, 2017, starting at 7 p.m., at
the Polish Club of Denver (3121 West Alameda Ave. Denver, CO 80219). Award
winners are invited to attend free of charge, all other guests and conference
participants should register on PAHA Website.
Moonrise Press presents five poets in a special open and free reading during the Lit Crawl 2016 Poetry Festival in North Hollywood, on Wednesday, October 26, 2016, at 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m.
The reading will take place at XMA HQ, 5140 Lankershim Blvd., on the right side of Lankershim if going up, below Magnolia, corner of Hartsook. Number 8 on the map:
The reading will include poems from Moonrise Press's anthology Meditations on Divine Names (2012) and Maja Trochimczyk's Into Light: Poems and Incantations (2016).
(c) 2016 by Maja Trochimczyk, from Into Light: Poems and Incantations
If all goes well, we'll listen to the nightingale through the reading:
BIOGRAPHIES OF POETS FOR THE LIT CRAWL OCTOBER
2016
Joe DeCenzo grew up in Los
Angeles and majored in theater and English Literature. From 2004-06 he served
as the 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 appeared in Meditations on Divine Names anthology (2012) and other venues. Joe
currently serves on the planning committee for the Village Poets of
Sunland-Tujunga and as Chair of Poet Laureate Search Committee.
Elsa S. Fraustowas born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has lived in the
Foothills with her family for over twenty years. She was the coordinator and
host for Camelback Readings held at the Sunland-Tujunga Library. Elsa is a
member of the Chuparosa Writers, volunteers at the Friends of the Library
Bookstore and at the Noise Within Theater (Pasadena) and is poetry editor and
translator for the Spanish language literary magazine la-luciernaga.com. Her
work has appeared in many local and international publications, among them Porte des Poetes, Speechlessthemagazine,
Poem of the Month in Poets at Work, Badlands, Meditations on Divine Names,
and anthologies by Poets on Site.
Marlene Hittwas the first Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga. She has been
a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland-Tujunga and the Foothills since
its inception in 1985. In addition to poetry chapbooks, anthologies and
readings, she has authored a non-fiction book "Sunland-Tujunga, from
Village to City". She served at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga as
Museum Director and docent and currently is the member of the ST Neighborhood
Council. She also co-founded Village Poets in 2010. In addition to her poetry
activities, she has served as history writer for the Foothill Leader and the
Glendale News Press, the North Valley Reporter, the Voice of the Village
newspaper, and other venues. Her most recent book Clocks and Water Drops was published in 2014.
Maja Trochimczyk, PhD, is a Polish-born poet, music historian, photographer,
and non-profit director. A former Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga, she
wrote/edited six books on music (includingFrederic
Chopin: A Research and Information Guide, Routledge, 2015), and published
six volumes of poetry -Rose Always (2011),Miriam’s Iris(2008) , Slicing the Bread(2014), Into Light (2016) and anthologiesChopin with Cherries(2010) andMeditations on Divine Names (2012).
Hundreds of her poems and articles appeared online and in print journals. She
serves as Board Secretary of the Polish American Historical Association, and is
an author of hundreds of articles, book reviews and poems published in Poland,
Canada, U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Sweden, and other countries. As President
of Moonrise Press, she is also a publisher of books on poetry, music and Polish
culture. She received fellowships from the American Council of Learned
Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and
honors from the Polish government (medal for the promotion of Polish culture),
PAHA, and others.
Ambika Talwar is an educator, author and artist, who has written poetry since
her teen years. She has authored Creative
Resonance: Poetry—Elegant Play, Elegant Change; 4 Stars & 25 Roses; and
other chapbooks. Her style is ecstatic making her poetry a “bridge to other
worlds.” She is published in Kyoto
Journal, Inkwater Ink – vol. 3, Chopin with Cherries, On Divine Names,
VIA-Vision in Action, in Poets on Site collections, in St. Julian Press, Tower Journal, and others; has been
interviewed by KPFK; has recorded poems for the Pacific Asia Museum. She has
also won an award for a short film at a festival in Belgium. She practices IE: Intuition-Energetics™, a
fusion of modalities, sacred geometry and creative principles for wellness and
teaches English at a community college. Originally from India, she resides in
Los Angeles, California. Sites: goldenmatrixvisions.com and intuition2wellness.com
Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Dorothy Skiles and Maja Trochimczyk
at the first reading from Meditations on Divine Names (2012).
Los Angeles welcomes back Lit Crawl L.A. to the NoHo Arts District on Wednesday, October 26, 2016 from 6pm-Midnight. Restaurants, bars and other hip NoHo venues will host a a FREE evening. Experience literary LA’s incredible array of local reading series and literary organizations all in one evening as you crawl from venue to venue, reading to reading! All events are free–food and drink are not included. Every venue is within a walkable radius from the Metro North Hollywood rail station so Angelenos throughout SoCal can Go Metro to attend this unique literary festival.
Lit Crawl® L.A. is presented by the Los Angeles Literary Foundation and is a project of the Litquake Foundation. San Francisco’s Litquake literary festival runs October 7-15, 2016, with affiliated Lit Crawls in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Seattle, Iowa City, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Cheltenham, Boston, and Wellington, New Zealand, with more cities in the works. Lit Crawl® L.A. is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs and with the support Community Partners.
The first official reading from The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile book of poetry by Maja Trochimczyk, published in August 2016, took place on September 19, 2016, in Warsaw, at the Uniwersytet Warszawski's Faculty of Sociology, during an event co-sponsored by the History Meeting House (Dom Spotkan z Historia) and organized by the Kresy Siberia Foundation, an international non-profit headquartered in Australia.
The reading was the first presentation at the Generations Remember 2016 International Conference of descendants and survivors of Soviet deportations of Poles to Siberia, Kazachstan, etc.during and before WWII. According to scholar and artist Adrian Palka (Coventry University), it was exceptionally well received and set the tone for the whole day, being an instance of what Palka called "post-memory" - the second generation of children of survivors internalizing and describing their parents' experiences, as if these experiences were their own. The reading was bilingual, in Polish and English, but for now, only the English version is available in print.
The book is available from lulu.com, in paperback and eBook formats. A bilingual English-Polish version with translations and additional poems is in preparation.
The author, Maja Trochimczyk was selected for a radio interview by WNET Radio, representing California, along with architect Barbara Gdowski of Perth, representing Australia, and Stefan Szewczuk, President of Poles in South America organization.
At the Radio WNET Studio, with Stefan Szewczuk, and Barbara Gdowski
With Maciej Czarkowski, who organized the interview for WNET Radio.
The conference itself was well-documented in the media, with news reports, and interviews, including a report by Polish TV Polonia: http://polonia24.tvp.pl/27038817/sybiracy. Other links to follow.
For a program, speakers and other information about the conference, visit Kresy-Siberia.org website.
Moonrise Press announces the publication of “The Rainy Bread: Poems of Exile” by Maja Trochimczyk. This volume includes 30 poems about forgotten stories of Poles living in the Eastern Borderlands of Kresy, who were killed, deported, imprisoned, or oppressed after the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939. Some of these brief portraits capture the trauma and resilience, ordeals and miraculous survival stories of the author’s immediate family. Her maternal family comes from Baranowicze and the surrounding area near Adam Mickiewicz’s Nowogródek and the mythical lake of Świteź in what is now Belarus. Their experiences of displacement, hunger, cold, and poverty during the war are typical of Polish civilians.
These fictionalized memories are coupled with depictions of survival of other Poles deported to Siberia, the Arctic Circle, or Kazakhstan; who left the Soviet Union with the Second Corps of the Polish Army under General Władysław Anders; were transported to refugee camps in India or Africa; and ended up in Argentina, Canada, Australia or the U.S. The book is a companion to “Slicing the Bread: Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems” (Finishing Line Press, 2014), with which it shares some poems, including vignettes from the author’s childhood in Warsaw, permeated by the strange rhetoric of the Polish People’s Republic, yet still overshadowed by the war.
≡ ABOUT THIS BOOK ≡
Unwavering in
its honesty, The Rainy Bread is a thought-provoking look at a
brutal chapter in history: the Soviet occupation of Poland during World War II
and the deportations and repressions that took place in the country's Easter
Borderlands, known as Kresy. Trochimczyk gives a public face to this
history but also reveals the private heart of a family that endures despite
horrific loss. With simple language and stark imagery, these poems create
a powerful testimony and bear witness to the hate that destroys, to the truth
that restores, and to the poetic vision that honors our common humanity.
≡ Linda Nemec
Foster, author of Amber Necklace from Gdańsk (LSU
Press),
winner of the
Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association
Maja
Trochimczyk’s poems draw you into a bestial, almost inconceivable
history. Using objects—bread, potatoes, trapdoors, high heels—she guides
you through an experience with the madness of World War II and its aftermath
when a dictator is judged worse or better by how many fewer millions he has
slaughtered. This book needed to be written. This is a fascinating,
tragic, and instructive time in history which should not me neglected. Trochimczyk
doesn’t lecture; you are riveted by the power of her poems; their narratives
flow from her hands as if a Babcia were still guiding them.
And maybe she was. You will remember the taste of this book.
≡ Sharon
Chmielarz, author of Love from the Yellowstone Trail
≡ LIST OF POEMS ≡
≡ PART I ≡ DESTINATIONS ≡ 1
1. What to Carry ≡ 2
2. Starlight ≡ 3
3. Charlie, Who Did Not Cross ≡ 4
4. Five Countries in Venice ≡ 6
5. Eyes on the Road ≡ 8
6. The Baton ≡ 9
7. Diamonds ≡ 10
≡≡ PART II ≡ THERE
AND NOWHERE ≡ 11
The
Odds ≡ 12
Wołyń ≡ 13
1 Kołyma ≡ 15
Amu Darya ≡ 16
1 Shambhala ≡ 18
1 Reflection ≡ 20
1 A Piece of Good Advice to Stuff in the Hole in the Wall ≡ 21
A Pilot in Pakistan ≡ 22
. Under African Sky ≡ 23
≡
≡ ≡ PART III ≡ THE HUNGER DAYS ≡ 25
Kasha ≡ 26
The Trap Door ≡ 27
Slicing the Bread ≡ 29
Peeling the Potatoes ≡ 30
≡≡ ≡ ≡ PART IV ≡ THERE AND BACK ≡ 33
2 Of Trains and Tea ≡ 34
Once Upon a Time in
Baranowicze ≡ 35
Ciocia Tonia ≡ 37
Asters ≡ 39
No Chicken ≡ 41
The Coat ≡ 43 Short Legs ≡ 44
Standing Guard ≡ 46
Losing Irena ≡ 47
Language ≡ 48
≡ INTRODUCTION ≡
My previous book of war-themed poems, Slicing the Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2014) was prefaced with a rhetorical question: “If I were born in Warsaw, a city that lost 700,000 of its inhabitants, shouldn’t I at least try to remember some of them? The 450,000 Jews and 250,000 non-Jewish Poles died before October 1944, when everyone left in Warsaw after the Uprising was expelled to deportee or labor camps, while the buildings of an empty city were dynamited into a sea of ruins.” Then, the Soviets came…
This chapbook, written for the Kresy-Siberia Conference in Warsaw in September 2016, takes the story further east and around the world as it traces the displacement of deportees, their ordeals and miraculous survival stories. After the war, my parents, Aleksy Trochimczyk (25 September 1927 – 11 May 2001) and Henryka Teresa Trochimczyk, née Wajszczuk (16 December 1929 – 4 July 2013) came from provincial villages and towns in the Easter Borderlands, or Kresy, to study engineering at the Polytechnical University of Warsaw. They met while picking bricks off the ruined streets of Warsaw (“The Coat”). My father’s family was Belarussian, with roots in the Ukraine and beyond; during the war, they were hungry and impoverished, but stayed on the family farm in Bielewicze, now in Poland.
My mother’s family of Polish gentry and city folk living in Baranowicze and the surrounding area near Adam Mickiewicz’s Nowogródek and the mythical lake of Świteź in what is now Belarus, was particularly affected by the deportations: the families Wajszczuk, Wasiuk, Ignatowicz, Gliński, Hordziejewski…Six poems are based on the memories of grandmothers and great aunts, my mother and father. “Slicing the Bread” documents my Mom’s obsession with saving and hoarding food, due to the years of war-time hunger. “The Trap Door” commemorates my Dad’s family survival in an isolated hamlet of Bielewicze near Gródek Białostocki. It was so close to the forest, it was constantly scoured for food by the “partisans” – but also fed the Germans, and the Soviets when they came. I admired the courage and resilience of my Belorussian Babcia, Nina Trochimczyk, née Niegierysz.
“The Odds” is about my Mom’s uncles, Catholic priests. Father Karol Wajszczuk (1887 – 1942) was a prisoner of the Lublin Castle since April 1940. He was moved to Sachsenhausen and then to Dachau, on December 14, 1940. He died on 28 May 1942 in the Castle Hartheim: in a gas chamber, originally built to exterminate the disabled in the Euthanasia program and later used to kill prisoners from Dachau. His father, Piotr, was the brother of Franciszek, the patriarch of the Wajszczuk-Trochimczyk family branch, and the father of Stanisław Marcin Wajszczuk (1895-1973), my grandfather from the village of Trzebieszów in Podlasie. Father Feliks Wajszczuk (b. 1902 – d. 1973), Karol’s cousin, was in Sachenhausen, then in Dachau since 14 December 1940. He was liberated by Americans on 25 May 1945 and spent the rest of his life in a monastery in France.
In my poem, Karol and Feliks are paired up with another set of brothers, Artur Gold (1897-1943) and Henryk Gold (1902-1977), Jewish composers and musicians from Warsaw. Henryk survived by joining the musicians of the Second Corps of the Polish Army commanded by General Władysław Anders (1892-1970). Artur died in Treblinka. The group of Jewish musicians included Henryk Wars (Henry Vars, 1902-1977, “The Baton”) and many other survivors.
My Grandma and her sisters, my Mom’s maternal aunts, appear in several poems. Babcia Maria Anna Wajszczuk, born Wasiuk (1906-1973) in Baranowicze, wore her head high in the peasant village (“No Chicken”) and taught me the skill of “Peeling the Potatoes.”
Ciocia Tonia, or Antonina Glińska lost her husband to a Soviet bullet, and survived exile to Siberia, to return to Poland in 1954. Alas, her sons did not do as well: the older lost his life, drowning in Yenisey, the younger, indoctrinated in Soviet schools, lost his soul to a career in economics, the government, and PZPR.
Aunt Antonina is commemorated in “Ciocia Tonia” and her sister, Ciocia Irena, married name de Belina, appears in “Losing Irena.” She was deported with her whole family, and came to America as an orphan, whose path from Siberia through Iran, Switzerland to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico never ceased to amaze me.
Ciocia Jadzia, married name Hordziejewska, was resettled with her noble-born husband, Dominik in the early 1950s. They were sent from their estate near the lake Świteź to a drab settlement house in Gdańsk-Oliwa, emptied of its German inhabitants (who, in turn, were resettled further West). Their portraits are in “Asters.” More details may be found on the family tree, www.wajszczuk.v.pl, compiled by Waldemar Wajszczuk and Barbara Miszta, née Wajszczuk of Trzebieszów.
In addition to these rich and varied reprinted four poems based on my own childhood experiences in Warsaw, the capital of the socialist Polish People’s Republic where I went to school and wondered about the shadow of the war: “Short Legs,” “The Coat,” “Standing Guard,” and “What to Carry.” Even though these poems focus on my native Warsaw, the intergenerational trauma that they express stems from my Mom’s experience escaping from Soviet-occupied Baranowicze back to German-occupied Poland.
A sizeable portion of new poems commemorate deportees to Siberia and Central Asia. “Eyes on the Road” is based on an episode in the life of Roma King, author of Footsteps in the Snow: A True Story of One Family's Journey Out of Siberia (2010). Carlos (or Charlie) Stalgis (“Charlie, Who Did Not Cross”) was born in Argentina and his family took the unsuccessful trek to the Polish border from the environs of Baranowicze (“Charlie, Who Did Not Cross”), while my grandparents, Mom, and uncle made it across the river Bug (“Starlight”).
Baranowicze was also where the father of Lucyna Przasnyski had his roots (“Once Upon a Time in Baranowicze”). As a child deportee, Andrzej Dąbrowa took the infernal boat-ride along Amu Darya to the Aral Sea. Zofia Janczur had diamonds hidden in her shoes that saved the life of her whole family. Roma King waited for her Dad to come and get them, and he did (“Eyes on the Road”).
I heard their stories during an event about Sybiracy organized for the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club in Los Angeles by Dorota Olszewska, herself an heir of Polish deportees to Siberia, repatriated to Szczecin (Stettin). On a sunny afternoon of June 5, 2016, they were joined by other survivors, Zofia Cybulska-Adamowicz, Wiesław Adamowicz and Elżbieta Nowicka in revealing their painful memories of Siberia or Kazakhstan (“On Trains and Tea,” “A Piece of Good Advice…” and “Kasha.”) The four pathways to California in “Five Countries in Venice” were shared by Carlos Stalgis, Roman Solecki, and Stefan Wiśniowski, the founder of Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and the Facebook Group that brought us together.
Another poem, “Under African Sky” emerged from the biography of painter Julian Stanczak (b. 1928) who lost the use of his right hand in a Soviet gulag, and re-invented himself as an artist in the refugee camp in Masindi, Uganda. The “tiger’s eye” I put in his hand is fictional but reflects the main idea of a re-oriented, yet immensely creative life. The Polish American Historical Association gave him theirs Creative Arts Prize in 2014 and thus I was introduced to his sublime and monumental and art.
At the Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles I watched an astounding documentary about Polish pilots training the new Pakistani Air Force. Established in 1947 during the division of India, the Moslem Pakistan needed help in creating its military; a task assisted by about 30 Polish pilots, veterans of the Battle of Britain. Polish Eaglets Over Pakistan (Polskie orlęta na pakistańskim niebie) presented their stories and the two vivacious female pilots particularly impressed me.
The suffering of the Polish victims of massacres by Ukrainians in the region of “Wołyń” (Volhynia, Волинь, since 1945 in Soviet Union, since 1991 in the Ukraine) only recently started to attract any attention. It was, and is, a political hot potato, just like the Armenian genocide by the Turks.
The region of Kołyma (Колыма́) partly above the Arctic Circle includes many mines, to which the Polish Home Army soldiers were sentenced through the 1940s and 1950s for continuing to fight a guerilla war against the Soviet occupiers. Known as żołnierze wyklęci (the cursed soldiers), they were remnants of units that counted nearly 80,000 at the end of the war. The last of them, Józef Franczak, was killed in 1963.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all the individuals whose stories I transformed into poems. This book is meant to honor their sacrifice and document their resilience and survival. In addition to the members of my extended family, I’m especially grateful to Stefan Wiśniowski, and Sybiracy in California Zofia Cybulska-Adamowicz, Wiesław Adamowicz, Roma King, Zofia Janczur, doktor Bożena Gryglaszewska, Elżbieta Nowicka, Andrzej Dąbrowa, and Dorota Olszewski who encouraged them to share their painful recollections.
Sincere thanks is also due to the Finishing Line Press and its team of editors that published the original ten of these thirty poems in Slicing the Bread in 2014.
Finally, I would not be able to finish these poems without the assistance of fellow poets and writers whose comments have been as valuable to me, as is their friendship: Elżbieta Kańska, John Guzłowski, as well as the Westside Women Writers: Millicent Borges Accardi, Lois P. Jones, Georgia Jones-Davis, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Madeleine Butcher, and Sonya Sabanac. Thank you.
≡ ABOUT THE POET ≡
Photo by Susan Rogers, 2013
MAJA TROCHIMCZYK,
Ph.D.,is a poet, music historian, photographer, and non-profit
director, born in Poland and living in California. She published six books on music and five volumes of poems: Rose Always - A Court Love
Story, Miriam’s Iris, and
Slicing the Bread: Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems, plus two
anthologies, Chopin with Cherriesand Meditations on Divine Names that offer “rich poetic material
selected and collected with great sensitivity” (Grażyna Kozaczka, Polish Review, 58/4, 2014). Hundreds of her
articles and
poems appeared in English, Polish, as well as in German, French, Spanish
Serbian, and Chinese translations, in such journals as Angel City Review, The Loch Raven Review, Epiphany Magazine, Lily
Review, Ekphrasis Journal, Quill and Parchment, Magnapoets, SGVGPQ, The
Cosmopolitan Review, The Scream Online, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology,
Lummox Journal, Poetry Magazine, Poezja Dzisiaj, OccuPoetry, as well as
anthologies by Poets on Site, Southern California Haiku Study Group, the
Altadena Library, and others. The Sixth Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga
(2010-2012) and the founder of Moonrise Press, Trochimczyk presented her work
at over 70 national and international conferences in Poland, France, Germany,
Hungary, U.K., Canada, and the U.S. She received fellowships and awards from
the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, USC, McGill University, MPE Fraternity, the Polish
American Historical Association, the City and County of Los Angeles, and
Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. (www.trochimczyk.net).
