We wish all our readers, authors, and book lovers the most peaceful and happy holidays, with lots of time for reading and resting, and the most creative and successful New Year 2018!
May your literary, poetic, and artistic interests come to fruition!
May you write, create, and publish what you always dreamed about!
May your readers enjoy the fruit of your efforts and share their delight!
With best wishes,
Moonrise Press
At Moonrise Press, we publish poetry, especially spiritual, and also by women. We also publish non-fiction books about Polish history and culture. Another project is bringing out reprints of classic wisdom texts, such as Ethics by Spinoza that appeared in 2017.
In 2017 the following titles were issued by Moonrise Press, in reverse chronological order.
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.
Moonrise Press is proud to announce
the publication of
CLOCKS AND WATER
DROPS by MARLENE HITT
ISBN 978-0-9819693-5-0,
118 pages, $15.00, paperback
Los
Angeles: Moonrise Press, 11 April 2015 Distributed by lulu.com The first reading will take place at Bolton Hall Museum, in Tujunga on May 24, 2015, 4:30pm. villagepoets.blogspot.com
Clocks and Water Drops is the first full-length collection of
poetry by Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a former
Director at the Bolton Hall Museum, a local historian, poet, and community
activist. The book of reflections about her life, family and neighborhood
changing through the decades, includes 73 poems in sections dedicated to:
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.
Poet Jack Cooper praises Hitt’s “astute and thoughtful voice” while Kath Abela
Wilson admires her “confident and consistent phrasing, and exacting vision.”
Marlene Hitt at Pasadena Lit Fest, 2016.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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, 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. Her work appeared in Psychopoetica (UK), Chupa Rosa Diaries of the Chupa Rosa Writers, Sunland (2001-2003),
Glendale College’sEclipseanthologies, two Moonrise Press
anthologies, Chopin with Cherries
(2010) and Meditations on Divine Names
(2012), and Sometimesin the Open, a collection of verse by
California Poets Laureate. She published Sad
with Cinnamon, Mint Leaves, and Bent Grass (all in 2001), as well as Riddle in the Rain with Dorothy Skiles,
and a stack of chapbooks for friends and family.
Ms.
Hitt, elected Woman of Achievement for year 2001, served as 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 theFoothill
Leader, Glendale News Press, North Valley Reporter, Sentinel, and Voice of the Villagenewspapers 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.
Around this hand I wind a yellow quilting thread thick and strong over and over, back onto itself; Around my hand goes the Bad Man thread; with scissors I cut him out. Mr. Barker’s store when I stole a pin, I tie in a knot. Tommy, whose thread had snapped, whose death changed the world. Through my heart winds a thread around kindness and a doll from a stranger, one with eyes that closed and real hair. Around and around I wind the men in the drug store who teased this child, I tie them tight, choking them below their lidded eyes. Around and around their smoke rings, cigarette burns on the tables, smoke blown into the eyes of little girls sent to buy “Wings, two packs for a quarter” as they clutched their father’s coin or ration stamps for their mothers who yearned for sugar, butter. Around my hand, thread, thick like a tumorous growth, thread so many-colored as to turn brown with the winding into the brown of your eyes, you, who saved me from one world to place me into another where we dragged ourselves dreaming about bright kingdoms and robes of kings. One fine day the needle, threaded, pierced my flesh. I bleed easily and long, spill red onto the thread around my hand, the honest cotton through my heart and around my arms. With the threads knotted and frayed I stitch my words for you to see.
(c) 2015 by Marlene Hitt, from Clocks and Water Drops
ABOUT THIS BOOK
“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 Hitt’s astute and thoughtful voice
paints a world as gentle as lamb’s wool and precious as a girl’s fisrt pony.
Open this cedar chest of poems, don its knitted socks and prepare to chase the
moon through love and time.
~
Jack Cooper
Author,
“Across my Silence”
“Marlene
Hitt is a poet beyond measure… she holds each thing to her eye and finds inner
correspondences. She finds in the mind- an empty glue a “back alley” and
wonders what words to write, as we all do, on a blank page, or “the bronze
grave marker” she buys for herself. Each of her poems works on several levels,
and almost always ends with a very interesting surprise or revelation. The significance
of each detail is stunning and inspiring. She sees objects as possessing
uncanny power. She recalls her feeling that the clock pendulum in the house has
captured time with its sound, and stolen it from her own grandmother. By her
confident and consistent phrasing and exacting vision, she follows her own life
from early childhood to now. She calls upon us as readers to look at her life,
and back into our own for the metaphors inherent and active… alive, in all of
us today.”
~ Kath Abela Wilson
Poet Artist, founder
of Poets on Site
“Marlene
Hitt is an attentive poet, an inspired poet. She listens to the sounds of the
past, disappearing from our electrified, virtually connected lives: the “plodding of beetles,” the ticking of the
grandfather clock, the tapp8ing of rain on the windowsill. She watches shifting hues in the sky and the
mesmerized faces of children “glued” to their TVs; she sees how the children
still brighten at the sight of the Christmas tree. Marlene shows her readers
what a life well lived could be; she makes her poems from family stories,
community celebrations and discoveries in the back alley. She portrays her
grandparents and her children, yet she does not forget her neighbors, the
homeless, the lost…
Clocks and Water Drops, her first full-length poetry collection, is
a gift of “small things” – a gift of remembrance and affection, a whimsical and
wise offering of carefully calibrated images and reflections. We are thankful
for the talent of Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a
historian of local communities, and a treasure of poetry in the Foothills.
The next reading from Ed Rosenthal's "The Desert Hat" will take place on Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 4:30 p.m. at the Monthly Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall Museum. The Bolton Hall, which is the City of Los Angeles's Historical Monument No. 2, is located on 10110 Commerce Avenue in Tujunga, CA 91042.
Read an update about Ed Rosenthal's ordeal and survival on Downtown News blog by Jack Skelley with a capsule review of the book:
"Just over three years ago, after making a wrong turn on a hike, Ed Rosenthal, The Poet Broker of Downtown L.A., was lost for 6 days in Joshua Tree National Park. ... The temperature climbed above 100 degrees every day that week. Miraculously, Ed survived. Now, three years later, he has processed the experience. Beautifully. Ed has just published The Desert Hat, Survival Poems (Moonrise Press). And reading it is an astonishing experience in its own right. If Ed has just recounted his dramatic story, that would have been a good read. But Ed is a poet. He gropes for elusive meanings in his transformational desert suffering. Recurring images broaden into symbols, link, and elevate the book into, essentially, one extended poem." ~ Jack Skelley
http://jsprla.com/updates/2013/11/13/surviving-was-a-big-deal-for-downtowns-poet-broker
WHO: Hybrydy Student Theater of The University of
Warsaw
Piano and Voice – Dominika Świątek | Narration –
Bartłomiej Ardecki
Guitar – Marcin Dąbrowski | Directed by Maciej
Dzięciołowski
WHERE:Ruskin Art Club, 800 S. Plymouth, Los Angeles, CA 90005
WHEN:Saturday, 9 March 2013, 6:30 p.m.
WHAT: Music theater inspired
by the poetry and music of Czeslaw Milosz,
Zbigniew Herbert, Juliusz Slowacki Jacek Kaczmarski, Marian Hemar, Wladyslaw Szpilman
Performed by Dominika Świątek, Bartłomiej Ardecki and Marcin Dąbrowski. Directed by Maciej Dzięciołowski. Performed in Polish with English translations.
RSVP:Moonrise Press,
c/o Maja Trochimczyk, PO Box 4288 Sunland CA 91041-4288;
