Two of Moonrise Press authors will be featured at upcoming Village Poets Monthly Readings held on Sundays at 4:30 pm at at Bolton Hall Museum, located at 10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, Los Angeles, CA 91042-2313. Beverly M. Collins will read her work on Sunday, August 27, 2023, at 4:30pm. Suggested donation $5 per person for the cost of refreshments and to donate to the Little Landers Society that manages the Bolton Hall Museum, a Los Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913.
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Beverly M. Collins is one of 3 Winners in the Wilda Morris June 2021 Poetry Challenge (Chicago), a 2019 Naji Naaman Literary Prize in Creativity (Lebanon). Collins is also a prize winner for the California State Poetry Society, twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and short listed for the Pangolin Review Poetry Prize (Mauritius). Her photography can be found on the cover of Peeking Cat 40 (UK), displayed online by The Academy of the Heart and Mind, printed on Fine Art America products, iStock/Getty Images, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Spectrum, and others. Website: https://beverlym-collins.pixels.com www.facebook.com/bevelymcollinsnow Instagram@beverlymcollinsartist
Her book Mud in Magic was published in July 2015:
Beverly M. Collins’s "Mud in Magic" is her second poetry book, filled with the wisdom of experience, Her skillful and often aphoristic or narrative poems portray a scene or a character that we could encounter on our streets, in our cafes. The poems are organized into three parts: Thought Bistro (Part I), Tinder Flames (Part II), and Elixir Café (Part III). The beauty and wonder of daily life fill these pages and delight the readers.
Marlene Hitt's second full-size poetry volume, Yellow Tree Alone. Selected Poems will be featured during the Village Poets reading on Sunday, 24 September 2023 at 4:30 pm. Written between 1998 and 2022, these 129 poems bring together the fruit of a lifetime of wisdom and creativity. The title is borrowed from the last poem in the book, a description of a bright yellow tree, lonely in a vast empty field - a symbol of the loneliness of the poet, often misunderstood by those around her. It is a universal condition of every poet, every creative and inspired soul that reaches beyond the mundane, beyond their immediate surroundings, transmuting the chaff of experience into the gold of words. Marlene Hitt's poetry perfectly exemplifies this alchemy of creative craft.
182 pages (xviii pp. prefatory matter, and 164 pp.); 6 in x 9 in.
ISBN 978-1-945938-34-4, paperback, $22.00 plus S & H
ISBN 978-1-945938-35-1, ebook, ePub format, $10.00
Cover photo by Karen Winters, cover design by Maja Trochimczyk
Yellow Tree Alone
Yellow tree
Stands glowing
In sideways light
Regal and glorious
Her beauty
Her message
For life’s meaning
Wasted
With no one
To see that golden
Radiance
She sings
To no one
Who’d hear her
But the Sun, Ra
The Giver of Gold
ABOUT MARLENE HITT
Marlene Hitt was the first Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (1999- 2001). She has been a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland- Tujunga and the Foothills since its inception in 1985. Her critically-acclaimed first poetry collection Clocks and Water Drops was published by Moonrise Press in 2015. In addition to publishing numerous poetry chapbooks, she has authored a non- fiction book Sunland-Tujunga, from Village to City. Her poems appeared in Psychopoetica (UK), Chupa Rosa Diaries of the Chupa Rosa Writers, Sunland (2001-2003), Glendale College’s Eclipse anthologies, CSPS California Quarterly and Poetry Letter; three Moonrise Press anthologies (Chopin with Cherries, 2010; Meditations on Divine Names, 2012; and We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology that she co-edited in 2020 with Maja Trochimczyk).
Most recently she was one of 12 poets invited to contribute to Crystal Fire. Poems of Joy and Wisdom (2022). Her work appears in Sometimes in the Open, a collection of verse by California Poets Laureate, and The Coiled Serpent, anthology of Los Angeles poets, edited by Luis Rodriguez (2016). She served at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga as Museum Director and docent for many years. Ms. Hitt was the history writer for the Foothill Leader, Glendale News Press, North Valley Reporter, and Voice of the Village newspapers. She has been honored as the Woman of Achievement by the Business and Professional Women's Club, Woman of the Year by the U.S. Congress, and many congratulatory scrolls by the City and County of Los Angeles, and the State of California. In 2019, Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga presented to Marlene and her husband Lloyd, a Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing their support of poetry in the Foothills.
