Still more readings from "Slicing the Bread" - in North Hollywood and Syracuse, NY

"The Voices of Survivors" 

 Maja Trochimczyk & Ed Rosenthal 

at No-Ho Unbuckled Poetry Readings

Saturday June 6, 2015 at 3:45 p.m.

The Unbuckled Poetry readings hosted by Radomir Luza  are held at T/U Studios, at 3:45 p.m. on the First Saturday of each month. 

The T/U. Studios are located at 10943 Camarillo Street (Behind Odyssey Video) (Off Vineland) at the intersection of Vineland, Camarillo and Lankershim. I will co-feature with Ed Rosenthal, author of "The Desert Hat" published by Moonrise Press in 2014 will co-feature at Unbuckled Poetry on June 6, 2015 starting at 3:45 p.m.

Radomir Vojtech Luza wrote the following description of the event: 
"At this time of despair and disjunction, disrepair and malfunction, it is artists that keep the globe spinning and the universe purring. Without these hardy souls, escape and hibernation would be nothing less than impossible and all but implausible. The day to day concerns and worries stripped bare by craftsmen and experts who entertain, educate, illuminate and inspire. It is artists who maintain the balance in a reality gone haywire and a turquoise orb given to tragedy, turmoil and chaos. Whether writers, actors, musicians, comedians, directors, poets, composers, editors or dancers, the fraternity has no end or beginning, merely a middle. And, as such, life changers and existence alterers each one." 

"Therefore, if you wish to encounter and embrace a crew or den of such magnificent muse manipulators, look no further than the monthly UNBUCKLED: NoHo POETRY reading taking place tomorrow, 6/6/15, at T.U. Studios in North Hollywood with Featured Poets Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal. 
At four and a half years, UNBUCKLED is the longest running literary series in North Hollywood. It offers life, love, literature and a family atmosphere that changes the world once every 30 or 31 days." 

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK

"If there is a more meticulous, dedicated and passionate poet than Trochimczyk on the Los Angeles poetry scene, this poet has not met him or her. The Polish butterfly publishes, writes, hosts and features in a dizzying schedule that makes her one of the busiest and most sought after poets in the city.

She will be reading from "Slicing the Bread," a chapbook about her parents and their experiences in WWII. If the book is anything like her past work, we have a painstakingly beautiful piece of art to look for ward to. And, really, who would expect anything less from Trochimczyk. This is Maja's first Feature at UNBUCKLED and Mary and I could not be happier to have her."

ED ROSENTHAL

The collection of poetry is THE DESERT HAT by Ed Rosenthal, and Elena Karina Byrne describes it this way: "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/in to 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."
Rosenthal, who survived alone in the Mojave Desert for six and a half days, is a gifted poet who has never read at UNBUCKLED before, but is thrilled and overjoyed to be making his debut tomorrow.
Ed is also courageous and resourceful. The poet-broker overcame tremendous odds that may have humbled others in escaping the desert. 

OPEN MIKE-Open to all poets, writers, actors, musicians and comedians.
Read your own work or that of someone else. It is alright just to watch as well.

The Palace Poetry Group Presents

Slicing the Bread / Krojenie Chleba 

 A Bilingual Poetry Reading 

by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk

TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 2015, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm.

DeWitt Community Library, DeWitt near Syracuse, NY

3649 Erie Blvd. East, DeWitt, NY 13214 
Tel.: (315) 446-3578 www.dewlib.org

Dr. Maja Trochimczyk at Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural, Sylmar, February 2015.

Photo by Jessica Wilson

Slicing the Bread. A Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems

 Paperback. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2014, $14 + $2.99 S & H

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2149

Slicing the Bread is a unique poetry collection revisits the dark days of World War II and the post-war occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union that “liberated” the country from one foreign oppression to replace it with another.  The point of view is that of children, raised by survivors, scarred by war, wary of politics. The poems, each inspired by a single object giving rise to memories like Proust’s madeleine (a spoon, a coat, the smell of incense), are divided into three sections, starting with snapshots of World War II in the Polish Borderlands (Kresy) and in central Poland.

Reflections on the Germans’ brutal killings of Jews and Poles are followed by insights into the way the long shadow of THE war darkened a childhood spent behind the Iron Curtain. For poet Georgia Jones Davis, this book, “brings the experience of war into shocking, immediate focus” through Trochimczyk’s use of “her weapon: Language at its most precise and lyrical, understated and piercingly visual.” According to Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet John Guzlowski, Maja’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… 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.

        Los Angeles Poet Laureate - Luis J. Rodriguez

Luis J. Rodriguez gave a reading at the Tujunga Branch of Los Angeles Public Library and the Village Poets welcomed him on May 23, 2015: Dorothy Skiles, Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, and Maja Trochimczyk. Elsa Frausto who organized the reading could not attend but was present through her poems. 

On Portraits, Monuments, and the Feminine Touch...

Poets after a reading at Bolton Hall Museum, February 22, 2015

Photo by Gene Schultz

In the middle of my book tour, reading an always changing assortment of verse from "Slicing the Bread" - a chapbook inspired by war memories of my family and the war's long shadow over my childhood - I started to feel like a star. Fame got to my head and it started expanding, like a balloon filled with nothing but hot air. It was Victor Sotomayor who did it - by posting my portrait, by Jessica Wilson Cardenas, on his Instagram account. In a gold jacket, with eyes lower to the page, I do look like a poet, a real poet.

Photo by Jessica Wilson Cardenas, February 2015

Or else, I look like I'm going to eat that mike... In any case, the "Slicing the Bread" book tour took me to the Rapp Saloon in Santa Monica, Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, Foster Library in Ventura and Tia Chucha's Center in Sylmar... Each reading was different, with a different selection of poems. I can make it about my Mom, my Dad, the Germans, the Soviets, the killing of Poles, the killing of Jews, the destruction of human spirit by the war.... Lots of options, all hard to deal with. At some readings people cried. I never do, these vignettes are into facts of life. It would have been better without these facts. But there are other facts of life, of equally horrid magnitude, that are happening right now, and nobody cries... The wars, the famines, the poverty, children dying before they grow up. . . and here we are reading poetry, instead of doing something useful.

Susan Rogers and Maja Trochimczyk. Photo by Susan Rogers.

But, poetry is useful. By naming things, it brings order to the world. By naming monsters and demons, it draws borders around them, makes them tame.  Some open mike readers were taming their personal monsters, reading stories of trauma that only they know well... Catharsis is an excellent use of poetry, and so is description of others. I'm a bit wary of extraordinarily beautiful and skillful descriptions of suffering. Somehow, the pain gets lost in the enchanting thicket of the words. It is better to be very matter-of-fact precise and simple. Basic even, just the bare bones. 

Reading at the Rapp Saloon, Photo by Susan Rogers.

At the first reading, at the Rapp Saloon (where I was invited by host Elena Secota), I was afraid that so much sorrow, death, and destruction will exhaust the listeners so I ended the reading with a couple of love poems from "Rose Always." It was still the month of February, the month of love... But these heartfelt romances felt like fluff, decorative and ornamental, but not very useful after the heaviness and tragedies of war. 

I decided putting both books in one reading was a mistake, and then I picked some of the most dramatic poems for the next appearance, at the Bolton Hall. The weather went dramatic too, with torrential rain. It did not help that I was competing with the entire Hollywood glamour, the Oscars.  Still, the choice group of poets who did not want to admire fancy dresses, and came to share the poetry instead, provided me with an extremely attentive and sensitive audience. The reading pleased everyone, and the open mike poetry was outstanding - with Toti O'Brien, Mari Werner, and Mira Mataric who read her translations into Serbian of three of my poems (photos still to come).

Poets at Tia Chucha's, February 27, 2015. Photo by Maria Kubal

The Tia Chucha's audience was equally focused on each word, made more difficult by my foreign - to them unfamiliar - accent.  But  I had help. For "The Way to School" Drgn Billy, percussionist from Tikkal Sun, and my newest Facebook friend, agreed to play his flat hand drum when I pointed at him. The blunt strokes of the mallet punctuated the poem, transforming the reading into a true performance. I was going to read more, but that artful and expressive piece needed nothing further. I can read more at the next stop of my poetry tour...

Monument for Polish civilians murdered by Germans in Warsaw in 1944.

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

The Way to School

Walking to her high school on Bema Street. 

she counted three cement crosses in ten minutes 

every morning.

One in the middle of her subdivision of apartment blocks, 

standing guard at the edge of chipped asphalt: 

Nine hundred.

One in the mini-park, where two gravel paths cross 

on a patch of overgrown grass after you go under the train bridge: 

Twelve hundred.

One on the wall of a grimy three-story building, 

with round bullet holes still visible in the stained, grey stucco: 

Twenty two hundred.

She memorized the inscriptions: “This place is sanctified 

by the blood of Poles fighting for freedom, murdered by Hitlerites.” 

 “Some Germans were good, not Nazis,” her teacher said, 

“They marched in the May 1st parades.”

Only the numbers differed, and dates:

August 5, August 6, August 7, 1944. The Uprising.

50 thousand civilians shot in the streets of Warsaw. 

The bullets came fast. Those soldiers had practice. 

Wehrmacht, Police Batalions, RONA, Waffen SS. 

No shortage of killers. Some had children back home. 

She did not want to think of thousands.

She did not want to know their names.

"The Way to School" was first published in San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, vol. 63 (2014) and reprinted in "Slicing the Bread" chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2014).

Monument to Polish civilians murdered by Germans in Warsaw in 1944.

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

_______________________________________

Tragedy and romance do not go together, unless the latter is the antidote for the former. This is the case with my Trilogy of Grief and Loss, published in a special issue of Clockwise Cat - entitled Femmewise Cat and including two of my photos and three poems: The Waiting, the Tragedy and the Shooting Star, a portrait of 29th century pianist-composer, Maria Szymanowska. 

The principle of the whole endeavor was highlighting women's creativity - women's issues, and women's art. Poetry, flash fiction, essays, rants, photography, drawings, profile of female artists we all must know. The volume is excitingly rich in content. It will take me a while to read this double journal of monumental proportions. The fun part, you can turn the pages electronically, and read it, on the screen, as if on paper.  I like that and will keep reading. 

             http://issuu.com/clockwisecat/docs/femmewise_cat_part_ii?e=13963388%2F11675756

I was extremely pleased with finally getting a whole series of excellent portraits from a reading, all by Jessica Wilson and Mary Kubal. (Otherwise, I pose with the book after the reading ends, and these shots often look as they are, completely staged and fake).  It was so kind for them to take the time to upload or send pictures to me, to spend time with my poetry and its aftermath.  This is love of a true friend. 

 

                                 Reading at Tia Chucha's. Portraits by Jessica Wilson Cardenas.

Is love just fluff, roses and chocolate hearts and kittens? No, not at all. Sometimes it costs a lot. Hours of waiting, tears in silence... The project of "Heartbreaks" in which Karineh Mahdessian paired up male and female poets (from the previous, separate anthologies), turned out to be not for me. I much rather write of long years of waiting, of those old fashioned virtues - faith, hope and love, but the greatest is love. ... 

In the meantime, big thanks to my female friends - who invited me, came to my readings, took photos, published my work, translated my poems, and supported me in a multitude of ways.  With this amount of love, the Women's Month, surrounding the International Women's Day (March 8) is off to a good start. 

Ah, and one more thing... The Editor, Kresse Armour, put an article about my Distinguished Service Award from the Polish American Historical Association in The Voice, Sunland-Tujunga's community paper. She called me "Local Woman" - I am so proud! "Local woman, walking down the street..." A foreigner, with a foreign accent still very pronounced, I made Sunland my home and now I am "local" - what a great gift for the Women's Month!