WWW at the Norton Simon Museum. August 2013.
L to R: Maja, Susan, Lois, Georgia, Sonya, Madeleine and Millicent.
"Grateful Conversations" - an anthology edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford for Moonrise Press (2018) - contains poems by nine writers - calling themselves the Westside Women Writers due to the location of the founding members. The anthology is a portrait of a group of female poets, who come together each month to hone their craft and share their verse.Not all poets live on the Westside and the meetings include workshops in poets' homes, or field trips to museums to write about artwork found there, or specific artefacts selected by a workshop organizer.
In the words of the WWW founder, Millicent Borges Accardi, this is “a community of women writers working together to support each other with strong attention to craft, to grow as writers and as people in community.” The volume includes poems written for seven workshops and self-portraits in poetry of the nine writers. The WWW group consists of Millicent Borges Accardi, Madeleine S. Butcher, Georgia Jones Davis, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, Ambika Talwar and Maja Trochimczyk.
Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology
Edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi StaffordPaperback, 280 pp., black/white illustrations,
ISBN 978-1-945938-22-1 ($24.80)
Color Paperback, 280 pages with color illustration
ISBN 978-1-945938-24-5 ($98.00)
E-Book in EPUB format with color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-945938-23-8 ($10.00)
http://www.moonrisepress.com/grateful-conversations-anthology.html
The ebook with color photos is available from kobo.com
https://www.kobo.com/my/en/ebook/grateful-conversations-a-poetry-anthology
You can read the editors' introduction with the table of contents on Moonrise Press Blog http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/05/grateful-conversations-poetry-anthology.html
Poets at first reading at Flintridge Bookstore, October 2018
ABOUT THIS BOOK
"Grateful Conversations, edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford, brings to its readers a wealth of women's wisdom and talent. This beautiful book contains poetic self-portraits of nine poets that form the Westside Women Writers group. The poets selected their own favorite poems that represent their worldviews and experiences; they also provided illustrations - photos of nature and families. A large portion of the volume is dedicated to verse based on shared themes, prompts, or site-visits to museums. Wisdom comes with age, and all nine poets featured in this anthology are over 50 years old so they have lived through a lot. While I feel compassionate towards the tragedies they describe, both personal and of others, I particularly like poems about family, the little blessings of daily life that are too often overlooked and should be cherished, with gratitude and grace. Rarely can one find in one place so many deeply moving and inspired poems, about the traumas of the past, the gifts to be cherished in the present, and hopes for a bright future."
~ Marlene Hitt, author of Clocks and Water Drops (Moonrise Press, 2015)
"I highly recommend "Grateful Conversations" for every library and poetry class. This anthology, edited by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, a Polish American scholar and poet, and Ms. Kathi Stafford, an attorney and poet, presents work by Westside Women Writers, a group of nine poets that meet every month to share poems, encourage and learn from each other. As a poetry teacher, I know how important such feedback is, and I appreciate seeing in print the proof of this work in the form of workshop poems written after site visits to local museums. As a Serbian American poet and writer, I'm also very pleased to see the work of my former poetry student, Sonya Sabanac, featured so prominently in this anthology, especially her poems about our war-torn homeland and the trauma of displacement as an emigrant. I am also very happy to read the poems of Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, whose work I have known and appreciated for many years. These two fellow Slavic authors are joined in the anthology by poets with roots in California, whose names are well known in the literary circles of America, such as Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portugese American, Ambika Talwar, an Indian American, Lois P. Jones, or Georgia Jones-Davis. Some of the poets are Jewish, some are Christian, some are spiritual without a religious denomination. All share the women's wisdom and maturity. All share their talents and poetic inspiration for which all readers should be grateful."
~ Dr. Mira N. Mataric, Poet, Writer, Translator, and Educator,
Pasadena, California
"Nine women poets converse, wake us up, send us to higher ground. Grateful Conversations carries us in and out of the emotion of memory, family, spirit, solid things and landscapes. Unlike much modern poetry, the nine writers present life and hope, not death and loss. This anthology gives us abundance, not scarcity, joy, not the grating irritations of guilt, fear and dissolution. There are generous portions for each poet: Accardi, Butcher, Jones-Davis, Jones, Rogers, Sabanac, Stafford, Talwar, Trochimczyk each get twenty to thirty pages of poetry with photographs taken by the poets and also there are seven sections of workshop poems. These are poets on quests for spiritual renewal, yet the poems are not sticky with New Age platitudes, but articulate, moving, textured and the reader is grateful, uplifted. “Look at these dogwood blossoms/caught in the act of flying,” writes Lois P. Jones. We look and we fly.
~ Alice Pero, author of Thawed Stars
PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS FOR 2018
2) Ode of the Lost and How to Make a Mazurka, on https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2018/05/on-chopins-mazurkas-and-grateful.html
~ Marlene Hitt, author of Clocks and Water Drops (Moonrise Press, 2015)
Susan Rogers, Sonya Sabanac and Maja Trochimczyk at Bolton Hall Museum, Tujunga, CA
November 25, 2018
"I highly recommend "Grateful Conversations" for every library and poetry class. This anthology, edited by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, a Polish American scholar and poet, and Ms. Kathi Stafford, an attorney and poet, presents work by Westside Women Writers, a group of nine poets that meet every month to share poems, encourage and learn from each other. As a poetry teacher, I know how important such feedback is, and I appreciate seeing in print the proof of this work in the form of workshop poems written after site visits to local museums. As a Serbian American poet and writer, I'm also very pleased to see the work of my former poetry student, Sonya Sabanac, featured so prominently in this anthology, especially her poems about our war-torn homeland and the trauma of displacement as an emigrant. I am also very happy to read the poems of Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, whose work I have known and appreciated for many years. These two fellow Slavic authors are joined in the anthology by poets with roots in California, whose names are well known in the literary circles of America, such as Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portugese American, Ambika Talwar, an Indian American, Lois P. Jones, or Georgia Jones-Davis. Some of the poets are Jewish, some are Christian, some are spiritual without a religious denomination. All share the women's wisdom and maturity. All share their talents and poetic inspiration for which all readers should be grateful."
~ Dr. Mira N. Mataric, Poet, Writer, Translator, and Educator,
Pasadena, California
Maja Trochimczyk reads at Flintridge Bookstore, La Canada, October 2018.
Photo by Lucyna Przasnyski
"Nine women poets converse, wake us up, send us to higher ground. Grateful Conversations carries us in and out of the emotion of memory, family, spirit, solid things and landscapes. Unlike much modern poetry, the nine writers present life and hope, not death and loss. This anthology gives us abundance, not scarcity, joy, not the grating irritations of guilt, fear and dissolution. There are generous portions for each poet: Accardi, Butcher, Jones-Davis, Jones, Rogers, Sabanac, Stafford, Talwar, Trochimczyk each get twenty to thirty pages of poetry with photographs taken by the poets and also there are seven sections of workshop poems. These are poets on quests for spiritual renewal, yet the poems are not sticky with New Age platitudes, but articulate, moving, textured and the reader is grateful, uplifted. “Look at these dogwood blossoms/caught in the act of flying,” writes Lois P. Jones. We look and we fly.
~ Alice Pero, author of Thawed Stars
PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS FOR 2018
The following poems from the anthology were nominated for Pushcart Prizes 2018 by the two editors:
- Grateful Conversations Never Had, Millicent Borges Accardi (Page 5)
- Sophie and Vincent, Madeleine S. Butcher (Page 34)
- Harp Player, Susan Rogers (Page 18)
- In that Banat Land, Sonya Sabanac (Page 54)
- Sweet Fire Dance of Dissent, Ambika Talwar (Page 219)
A sample poems can be found on this blog:
https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/06/sample-poems-from-grateful.html
An announcement was posted in Quill and Parchment, December 2018 issue, that also included the poem "Grateful Conversations" by Susan Rogers:
http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Dec2018/new2.html
In addition, Ambika Talwar was the featured poets in the same issue, with three poems, Varanasi, and On These Wintry Days. The journal Quill and Parchment also published poem by Maja Trochimczyk in the August issue.
http://quillandparchment.com/archives/August2018/lake.html
An announcement was posted in Quill and Parchment, December 2018 issue, that also included the poem "Grateful Conversations" by Susan Rogers:
http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Dec2018/new2.html
In addition, Ambika Talwar was the featured poets in the same issue, with three poems, Varanasi, and On These Wintry Days. The journal Quill and Parchment also published poem by Maja Trochimczyk in the August issue.
http://quillandparchment.com/archives/August2018/lake.html
Maja Trochimczyk's poems from the anthology are also reprinted on other blogs with announcements of this anthology:
1) On Eating Donuts at a Krakow Airport, and introduction; on the blog: https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2018/10/grateful-conversations-poetry-anthology.html
2) Ode of the Lost and How to Make a Mazurka, on https://chopinwithcherries.blogspot.com/2018/05/on-chopins-mazurkas-and-grateful.html
