We are happy to announce that Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal will give joint readings "Voices of Survivors" in February, May and June 2015. Ed will present his book, based on his experience of having survived more than six days without food and water in the Mojave Desert, called "The Desert Hat" and published by Moonrise Press in 2013. Maja will read from her newest chapbook, "Slicing the Bread. A Children's Survival Manual in 25 Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2014).
SCHEDULE OF READINGS
Thursday, February 26th, at 7:30 p.m. Ventura Ventura Poets Reading hosted by Phil Taggart “Voices of Survivors” book reading from “Slicing the Bread” with Ed Rosenthal reading from “A Desert Hat” inspired by being lost and found in the Mojave Desert
E. P. Foster Library, 651 East Main Street, Ventura, CA 93001 Phone (805) 648-2716
MAY 2015
Saturday, May 9th, 3 p.m. Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Pasadena, hosted by Don Kingfisher Campbell. Santa Catalina Branch of the Pasadena Public Library.
999 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena (east of Lake Blvd).
JUNE 2015
Saturday, June 6th, at 4 p.m. Unbuckled Poetry in North Hollywood hosted by Radomir Luza. “Voices of Survivors” – a joint reading of Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal, 10943 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood, 91602 818-769-1145
http://www.nohoartsdistrict.com/theatres/arts/theatre-unlimited-t-u-studios/6-unbuckled-poetry
In "The Desert Hat," Los Angeles poet/real estate broker Ed Rosenthal presents the mythopoetic journey through his real-life experience of being lost for 6 days in remote canyons of the Mojave Desert's Joshua Tree National Park in September, 2010. "The Desert Hat" delves deeply into the wildest and unpredictable heart of the Mojave into a storied landscape that Rosenthal renders as both recognizable to the reader and also deeply specific to his solitary and unanticipated experience, and in these poems, creates an empathetic and spiritually-affirming desert landscape that resonates within all of our desert hearts.
~ Ruth Nolan. Professor of English @ College of the Desert, California desert poet, writer, editor,conservationist & scholar
Ed Rosenthal’s The Desert Hat not only recounts an incredibly vivid story of survival, but maps out the dangerous journeys of the heart and the imagination in that hallucinatory place between mind and body, between nature and man, between the past and the future. Like poet James Wright, Rosenthal ”goes/ Back to the broken ground” of the self and finds a stranger there trapped in the cosmology of an endless, unpitying desert. As the stark “sun burns holes/ into the sky” the psyche’s true-north compass finds salvation’s shade. Rosenthal climbed out of “the busted monster’s mouth” with a beautiful, moving book.
~ Elena Karina Byrne, Executive Director of AVK Arts, author of The Flammable Bird, Masque and Squander
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Unwavering in its honesty, Slicing the Bread is a thought-provoking look at a brutal chapter in history: the German Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II. 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 Gdansk, 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. 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)
aja Trochimczyk’s poems about what the Poles suffered both during World War II and The Cold War afterwards are written with the clarity of truth and the fullness of poetry. If you feel that you have heard all there is to hear about those troubled times, you will learn in this book that you haven’t. Her poetic mixing of family narrative and the memories of other survivors feels like the essential stories our own parents told us when they wanted us to know that there were experiences that we must never forget. Here are the stories of how the people she loved experienced hunger and suffering and terror so strong that it defined them and taught her, and teach us, the meaning of family.
~ Dr. John Z. Guzlowski, Professor Emeritus, Eastern Illinois University, Pulitzer-Prize-nominated author of Lightning and Ashes about his parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany
