On the third Thursday of the month, Wine+Words monthly poetry night brings the spoken word to Mari’s Wine Bar. Beginning with an open mic at 8PM, each month features a reading from a prominent Southern California poet at 8:30PM. Lorine Parks curates the evening.
This month, Thursday April 19th features Laurie Soriano, winner of the Best Poetry Book of 2011 by the Indie Lit Awards.
A sensualist of the tongue, Soriano crafts poems that see the world with absolute clarity and then selects the details that will make it come alive for us. What she chooses to see most are people and animals. Soriano often uses animal imagery when talking of herself or other persons. Take the animal portrait of an aged couple in “Early Birds:”
They are hollow-boned, take their clawed hands
And guide them gently to the car . .
Her hair is a puff of white, his a scattering of dry grass
They bicker still, chirp/cheep in harmony . .
Tired from the flight, they totter off to bed.
Soriano write of the intimate music of relationship, desire and frailty. “Her poems tread quietly and cut deeply. They are relaxed yet sinewy. They are carefully measured and yet suddenly disarming.” –Billy Steinberg, songwriter. Soriano lives in Palos Verdes and in her day job in Century City she is a music attorney, representing recording artists and others in the music industry. She has a husband, three children and many pets. Her semi-autobiographical Catalina, (Lummox Press), ranges from “Coast” to “To Coast” to “Being Here” to “Looking Out.”
