Category: Poetry

Lorine Parks featured at Wine+Words Poetry

This Thursday night features DAC member and curator of the Wine+Words poetry series Lorine Parks reading from her new book of poetry Catalina Eddy. The open mic begins at 8PM at Mari’s Wine Bar, 8222 Firestone Blvd in Downey.

“Lorine Parks’s Catalina Eddy is one of the most surprising and hilarious poetic romps I have ever read. Weather is “the Family business” of these meteorological guys and dolls, molls and mobsters, of whom Eddy is only one of a charming and somewhat disreputable array of nourish figures…Yet the elegant music of these poems and their shifting emotional “eddies’ remind us that there is as often as not a dark and somber (not silver lining) to these particular clouds.”

—David St. John

June 18, 2012
Poetry of G. Murray Thomas, May 17

Thursday May 17 is the next Wine+Words poetry night. 8PM starts the open mic, and 8:30PM will feature poet G. Murray Thomas.

G. Murray Thomas newest volume, News Clips and Ego Trips,, has just been released from Write Bloody Press. Thomas will also read from My New Kidney Just Arrived, published in 2011 by Tebot Bach. His collection bristles with the gentle intelligence and humor of a poet of great maturity…”Thomas’s great gift as a poet is to see and be bewildered by the thoroughly weird things most of us take for granted”—Victor Infante . … Gadfly and long time fixture on the Long Beach poetry scene, his poetry has been published in numerous literary magazines, including Chiron Review, Pearl, Caffeine and Spillway. He has also published Cows on the Freeway, and five chapbooks, Death to the Real World, Opposite Oceans, Poetry Spilled All Over the Carpet, A Rare Thing, and Songs of Inappropriate Desire. In 2005, iUniverse reprinted Paper Shredders, an anthology of surf poetry Thomas first published in 1993.

Lorine Parks curates the evening, an intimate gathering of Downey’s literary lovers. Mari’s Wine Bar is at 8222 Firestone Blvd, Downey, CA. Handicap accessible, 21+ only.

May 10, 2012
Wine+Words features Laurie Soriano April 19th

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.”

April 9, 2012
Monthly Poetry: Hair Club for Poets March 24

Hair Club for Poets / Reading with Scissors is a monthly poetry series curated by John Brantingham and Roy Anthony Shabla, sponsored by the Downey Arts Coalition and the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival, and hosted by Number 34, Barber to the Star.

Each month includes one or two featured poets and an open mic, a featured artist, and grooming tips. Come for the culture, return for a coif!

HCP/RS is held the fourth Saturday of the month at 7:30 pm. Number 34 is located at 9029 Florence Avenue in Downey, catty corner and one block east of the oldest Mc Donald’s at Lakewood Boulevard.

Follow: Hair Club for Poets / Reading with Scissors, the Downey Arts Coalition, and the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival on facebook.

Due to an unforeseen cancellation, this month, HCP/RS will feature Downey’s favorite son, poet and painter Roy Anthony Shabla. Shabla currently has two books of poetry in print, the most recent of which is libretti lumi, a post-modernist love story, which received this review:

There is an overall sense of sureness and calmness in the poems presented… The subjects and symbolism are sharp yet they exude a relaxed state. I’m glad I opened the cover and dived on in –this is a poetry book I would read again and again. ~ThePoetryMarket.com<

His earlier book of poetry, eating God, has been hailed as the spiritual heir to Rumi. If poets could be superstars, at least in this time and country, Roy Anthony Shabla would be the man to watch! ~Spirit of the Valley

Roy Anthony Shabla has also published several poetry chapbooks, most notably, casa la reina, a poetic depiction of life in Downey, which has been described as:

A collection of sparingly gestural word sketches that create a keenly drafted interior of one man’s home and psyche on a particular day. Absolutely naked, absolutely genius!

For more information on Roy Anthony Shabla, go to RoyAnthonyShabla.com

Saturday, March 24, 7:30 pm, Number 34, 9029 Florence Avenue.

March 16, 2012
Wine+Words presents the Poetry of Raindog, March 15

Our next poetry reading is Thursday March 15, at Mari’s Wine Bar.

Raindog has spent the last twenty-five years pouring all his resources into poetry in the greater Long beach area, not only writing it but publishing, editing and promoting poets. His latest book is about some hospital experiences: ER/OR Living Among the Mangled.

He had to sell his Bukowski book collection to keep going, and does handyman jobs for a living. He drives across the western states giving readings and selling books from his Lummox Press, and the Little Red Book series.

By the way, if any one wants to donate an old car and get a deduction, he needs one.

He’s going to talk a little about Bukowski, and it should be a night to remember. Open mic sign-ups begin at 7:30PM, then begins at 8PM. Raindog will read at 8:30.

March 12, 2012
Wine+Words Poetry with Bruce Williams Feb 17

Our third-Thursdays poetry series continues at Mari’s Wine Bar with Bruce Williams as the featured poet. The open mic sign-ups begin at 7:30 PM for the first 10 poets, which begins at 8PM. Mr. Williams will read at 8:30PM. Mari’s is at 8222 Firestone Blvd, Downey, CA across from Porto’s. Wheelchair accessible, but 21 and over only. The Downey Arts Coalition sponsors these events, which are curated by Lorine Parks.

Bruce Williams grew up in Denver and received his PhD from Claremont Graduate University. For years he taught writing at Mount San Antonio College. He has two grown children, Drew, also a poet, and Casey Lynnette, a lawyer, like her mother, William’s late wife, Ellen. The poet still lives on a hill high above San Dimas, California with memories, a mountain-climbing roomer and two Jeeps. But he is spending much of his retirement in a cabin in Yucca Valley, near Joshua Tree Bruce has published several chapbooks: Clothes Poems (Pudding House), Stratification (Inevitable Press) and Everyone In My Support Group Feels Grateful After I Share. His first book length work, The Mohave Road and Other Journeys, has been published by Tebot Bach.

Bruce Williams’ “The Mojave Road and Other Journeys” is simply one of the most breathtaking and heartbreaking collections of poetry I’ve read in many years. These poems constitute a sequence of elegies and a folio of meditations upon illness, death and transcendence, and also upon the nature of late, redeeming love—David St. John

VARIATIONS

June 30

1
Dawn heats the sky,
bird song, dog barks a warning.
The hive in the wash
starts its buzz.

2
Her face
wrinkles into summer.
Her sex and eyes
stay young.

3
She asks,
“Who is this poem about?”
He looks at her
and lies

February 9, 2012
Contraptions Funk-Junk Art Show February 5th

In the spirit of bringing you, the Downey audience, unique and interesting art shows, our own Roy Anthony Shabla has conceived and is curating an event February 5th called “Contraptions,” with the subtitle “electrified, mechanized, digitized, funk-junk art show.” With as much technology in the world today, it’s long overdue that these feats of engineering get their own artistic spin.

The show features multimedia installations and robo-art by Greenie Arts, Carlos Durazo, Roy Anthony Shabla, David R Youel, Ruben Acosta, Ronnie Contreras, Nader Ghassemlou, Kevin Yoshikawa, DC Pimp Angel and many others. Shabla describes that he hopes the show has “a festival atmosphere with performance artists and roving poets… the show is democratic and open to any artist working in the mechanized, recycled junk world… think george herms electrified. think burning man. think multi-media explosion…”

Sunday, February 5th, 2012 outside Downey’s newest barber shop “Number 34,” operated by Downey’s home-grown hair-styling legend Ronnie Contreras. The show is 5pm to 9pm.

Ronnie, his shop, and their hope that it will become a new arts destination for the city, was covered by a great article in The Downey Beat, New take on an old idea: Downey hair cutter to host art shows, poetry at barber shop.

The shop is located at 9029 Florence Avenue, Downey 90240.

Just to add to the spectacle, the Superbowl game will be broadcast inside Number 34. 50 gift bags are promised as well.

Some of the sponsors include:

If you are interested in showing a piece as well, you can contact Roy at his website, RoyAnthonyShabla.com or email guruguynlalaland@aol.com.

[Updated 1/22/12 with new artists]

January 19, 2012
Poetry Night, Wine+Words with Judith Pacht, January 19th

The Downey Arts Coalitions “Wine+Words” poetry series moves to Third-Thursdays in January.

A good group made it out to hear Rick Smith in November. The featured poet this month will be Judith Pacht, reading on Thursday January 19. DAC member Lorine Parks curates the evening.

Pacht is a seasoned poet and teaches poetry workshops on subjects such as “Warping Time in Poetry.” Her newest book, Summer Hunger (Tebot Bach), has won PEN’s 2011 Southwest Book Award for Poetry.

While Pacht likes to play with words and sounds, her poems always reach for a larger conclusion. In “Surfaces,” she speaks of “the business traveler who clinches a merger, the hungry lovers who clinch and merge.” And in “Small Things” her rhythms takes the reader beyond a shared delight in the minutia of daily life and even the subtle interplay of Dodger baseball, to a further understanding:

Praise the sticky pollen on the bee’s
hind legs, the blossom’s private parts, the fruit.
Praise all vowels: masa and metate,
smooth and avocado, quesadilla.
Praise Nomo backing first base on Beltre’s throw,
Cohen reaching Ahmed, Ahmed reaching
words both used to know, speaking, speaking.

The poetry event will begin at 7:30 pm in Mari’s Wine Bar, at 8222Firestone, across from Porto’s, with sign–ups for open mike readings by volunteer local poets. Open mike reading will begin at 8 pm and Pacht will read at 8:30. The audience is invited to stay afterward for informal discussion with Pacht and other poets. Admission is free and there is handicap access and easy parking in the rear.

MARI’S WINE BAR

8222 Firestone Blvd, Downey 90241, between Downey and LaReina

across from Porto’s free parking in back handicap access

For more about Judith, and a complete bio, visit her website at judithpacht.com

January 12, 2012
Rick Smith featured poet at Wine+Words

Friday night at 9PM is Poetry at Mari’s Wine Bar, this month featuring poet Rick Smith, who long worked in Downey at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital.

The first kiss,

two wrens on fire,

blind with smoke and heat

storming out of the underbrush

of self-restraint

into a trembling

orgasmic future

well above the starving dogs

fast food chains,

the quick fixes below.

This flame will lick the wound

This flame will light up like this.

This flame will consume. from Hard Landings

Lorine Parks is curating the evening, which will begin with an open mic for the first 10 sign-ups. She describes how she came to know Rick.

“I first met Rick Smith thirty years ago when he was playing harmonica and piano in a band and composing such songs as “If it wasn’t for low class, we wouldn’t have no class at all.” Paris and Pennsylvania bred, he told me my Stonewood Travel business’s Music in Hold was crummy music, and proceeded to record a new tape for me. We have been friends and exchanging poems and critiques ever since.

“Smith’s first chapbook was The Wren Notebook, one of Raindog’s Little Red Book Series. In it, his protagonist Wren decides to win the title of Highest Flying Bird by hitching a ride tucked under Eagle. When Wren pops up, at twelve thousand feet and then flies a few feet higher, he almost freezes to death on re-entry. Further, Eagle and the rest of the birds chase him to have their revenge.. . “I held the note/long and rich as I could./ So what if it’s the only note I know?/ It’s my note.”

“All of Smith’s poems have a wry humor but they also have an intensely personal voice. He has an intimate quality to his work and a dead-flat realistic approach to what’s happening. Murder and revenge and a Buick LeSabre from Phoenix have equal place with delicate birds nesting in ruined upholstery in an abandoned mansion on an estate near Philadelphia.”

Smith has a PhD in psychology and worked in Downey at Rancho Los Amigo as a psychologist therapist for head-injured patients. He later established a rehab center in Apple Valley called Back in the Saddle for brain injuries. Read him at your peril. An old wren with one good eye, six feet four inches tall, “measuring out time by that splendid chaos, commotion.”

Live music by members of Downey’s folk band Willow Bend will perform at 8pm. Learn more about their unique brand of music at http://www.willowbendmusic.com

November 18, 2011
Wine + Words Poetry Night Friday Oct 21

October 21, 9PM at Mari’s Wine Bar, 8222 Firestone Blvd. Downey, CA

I always thought poetry readings would be one of the later additions to a city’s push into arts and culture. But now Downey will have its very own poetry reading series, which is a co-production with the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival and the Downey Arts Coalition. Through the hard work and literary efforts of John Brantingham, the vision and drive of artist/poet Roy Anthony Shabla, and support from other members of the DAC team this first evening presentation is Friday night at 9PM. This month features poets David Caddy and Ara Shirinyan. There will be an open mic before the featured readings for the first 10 who sign up the night of the event. If you miss this one (don’t), plan on the next one– it’ll be back the third Friday of each month.

October 18, 2011