Recent media stories about Moon Tide poets:
The Nazca Lines of Susan Davis
By Charles Hood, Antelope Valley College Blog
Feb. 8, 2012
My church hosts a social function titled "pairs and spares" — I am sure the term is not original to them — that allows couples and those without partners to share food and fellowship in a happy, safe, non-judgmental venue. I like that term a lot and it describes my days recently, where everything seems to be coming to me in matched pairs.
For example, I was looking for a Charles Olson quotation and found it in a journal entry from 12 years ago, where it was a companion to a clipping from Archaeology magazine. On the desert plains of Peru large-scale earth art ("geoglyphs") called the Nazca Lines spell out diagrams in stone, and the quotation I needed was paired with a shot of an archaeologist, Persis Clarkson, on site at this stony location. When making that journal page collage, I had hoped to go there, and while as of now I have never made it, life ain't over yet — I may make it yet.
Click here to read the full article.
Review of Susan Davis' I Was Building Up to Something
By Glenn Lyvers, Poetry Quarterly
Fall 2011
As an editor, I have some invested interest in all the writers I publish. I want them to be successful. I want others to be able to recognize the talent I discover, or print — and the importance of their work. I hope that in my old age, some writer will say "Glenn Lyvers was important to my career." Or perhaps it would be enough to know that some readers chose books to read because they trusted my opinion.
Imagine how happy I was to be asked to review a new book by the winner of last year's Rebecca Lard award. I recognized the beauty of her poems instantly, and I was delighted to hear our judge picked her poem, "The Season Begins in a Waiting Room," from the hundreds of submissions we received.
Click here to read the full article.
Meet Lee Mallory, O.C.'s poetry man
By Heather Goldin, Orange County Register
June 3, 2011
Lee Mallory set out to "shatter the stereotypes" of poetry when he launched a monthly reading near his Newport Beach home in 1991. After finding the perfect venue, complete with quiet waiters, dim lighting, and the smell of rich coffee in the nostrils, Poetry at Alta was born.
Poetry at Alta is not just another poetry reading — it's performance poetry. Each session, held on the second Wednesday of the month, presents a featured poet as well as a musician and an anything goes atmosphere prevails.
"The best poems surprise and shock," Mallory says. "I once crashed two plates together (because I was) caught up in the moment. … Performance adds an extra dimension."
The Poetry at Alta readings started three years after Mallory — who teaches at Santa Ana College — founded The Factory Readings in Santa Ana as an unofficial lab for his students to test out their work.
Click here to read the full article.
What's the Verse That Could Happen?
By Paige Turner, Newport Beach Independent
April 8, 2011
Lee Mallory, affectionately known as The Grandfather of Poetry in Orange County, hosts and produces the second-longest continuously running series of live poetry readings in Orange County. The readings are held monthly at the Alta Coffee House on the Peninsula, and feature not only live poetry performances, but live music and open-mike readings.
Mallory is on a mission. He is a poet and self-proclaimed zealot who is dedicated to shattering stereotypes about poetry and reversing the damage that bad high school English teachers have done, turning students off from narrow definitions of what poetry is.
"Poetry is exciting," says Mallory. "It is highly relevant to our lives."
He believes if he can get people into his readings, their view on poetry will not only change, but they find themselves inspired to try their hand at writing poetry themselves.
"I have had people come up to me and say, 'I am finding myself (through writing),'" he says.
Click here to read the full article.
The Artists Are Not Starving
By Yoon Song, Dig Magazine
April 7, 2011
There's something romantic and liberating about expressing yourself through a poem. It's cathartic to some, an obsession to others, but rarely is poetry something one pursues for the financial gains to be reaped, A highly edited piece of work might take months or years to finish, yet will only take up a single page. A completed poem captivates you like the curves and angles of a brand new car — but what you don't notice are the multiple coats of wax that make all of it pop. So for creative writing majors here at Cal State Long Beach with an emphasis on poetry, writing is much less about money than it is about creative expression.
***
Eric Morago performing his poetry is like watching severed power lines crackle in the air. There's a sense of excitement that grounds you to the floor, unable to move until his last word is spoken.
Click here to read the full article.
Grit Park
By Jerry Sullivan, Orange County Business Journal
Feb. 20, 2011
The only thing great about the Great Park in Irvine at this point is the ambition behind the project.
And the only thing super about the Great Park’s recent poetry reading on Super Bowl Sunday was the audacity of such an effort.
That might read like a sweeping indictment of the Great Park’s chances of becoming a civic treasure.
The place isn’t much more than a relatively small section of a giant patch of old military land anchored by a Sunday farmers market and balloon rides—and the latter has led to more than one pun about hot air.
Keep reading.
The Great Park might not even be near great at this point. But it’s got a chance because it’s got grit.
There’s no other way to explain the steadfast—or stubborn?—nature of promoters who pitted a couple of earnest poets against the most marketed spectacle of the year.
Click here to read the full article.
LMU Extension program brings poets to campus for first reading of the season
By Amy Lee, Los Angeles Loyolan
Jan. 13, 2011
The LMU Extension Program’s Spring Poetry Series kicks off its season at 8 p.m. today in U-Hall 1857 with poets/authors Michael Miller and Judith Pacht. The event is free and will start with eight to 10 open readers and an introduction to upcoming writing programs. This will be followed by readings from the two poets. The audience will have the chance to talk to Miller and Pacht and also have them sign books.
Peggy Dobreer, Community Relations coordinator of the LMU Extension Program, started the series on campus in the fall of 2008. Before its move to LMU, the series’ initial run was a reading called “A Horse of Another Color,” which was named after a full-sized calliope horse in Santa Monica’s Velocity Cafe, the original location of the series.
The poets will each have a 20-minute reading. Miller is the publisher of Moon Tide Press. He is also the host of the poetry and music series at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton called “Second Thoughts.” His book “College Town,” which he will be reading from, along with his newer poems, consists of a collection of 35 poems. Although the poems touch upon many subjects, they are all connected by the common theme of how different lives connect to each other.
Click here to read the full article.
There's Poetry in Altruism
By Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times
Nov. 23, 2010
Six months ago, dental hygienist Jodi Tamen sent one of her kidneys west from Chicago to a stranger in Los Angeles — a high-spirited, gray-bearded poet named G. Murray Thomas.
Last week, Tamen flew out herself to celebrate with the man whose gift her life restored.
I met up with them on Thursday, at poetry night on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, where Thomas read from his soon-to-be-published collection of poems, titled "My Kidney Just Arrived."
An outsized man, newly robust, Thomas wore a bright Hawaiian shirt and clutched a sheaf of thank-you cards signed by his friends. He introduced Tamen to the crowd as "a woman with only one kidney, but a heart as big as the ocean." He tried, but he couldn't get through his poems without crying.
"What do you say to someone who saved your life?" he asked, handing off the cards to Tamen. "Thank you, thank you … as many times as I can."
Click here to read the full article
Morago Has His Way With Words
By Michelle J. Mills, Whittier Daily News
Nov. 21, 2010
Whittier resident Eric Morago's book of poetry and short stories, "What We Ache For" (Moon Tide Press, $15), was published in October, but it hasn't been without a long journey.
"I always tell people that I was writing poems in high school, but I was writing poorly," Morago said. "I always had this desire in me to write and express myself through the means of poetry."
As a teen, he attended open mic poetry readings regularly and would write poems specifically to read at them, but in college, he studied theater arts.
"I love plays, but I wasn't the best actor," Morago said. "It was hard for me to fall into character and be somebody else.
"But the training "was a huge help to who I am as a poet and a performer."
Click here to read the full article
A Less Visible Art Flourishes
By Jennifer Erickson, Laguna Beach Independent
Aug. 13, 2010
Anyone who doubts the vitality of a poetry scene in Laguna Beach might find surprising the back story of an upcoming poetry reading by Jane Hilary and Gabriella Miotto, contributors to “Pop Art: An Anthology of Southern California Poetry.”
The members of the Laguna Poets Workshop are two of 10 poets featured in the recent Moon Tide Press publication, and will read their poetry and sign copies of their work at Latitude 33 Bookshop Saturday, Aug. 14, at 5 p.m.
Poetry thrives amid the fiction and non-fiction stacks at the Laguna Beach Library. In addition to providing a bi-monthly venue for the more advanced poets who belong to the workshop, the library encourages aspiring poets of all ages and abilities to test their mettle with an annual poetry contest. This year, the contest attracted 200 entries and more than 100 people showed up for the awards ceremony.
The art of verse remains popular among book buyers, who “are constantly asking us for poetry,” said Kim Vater, manager at Latitude 33 Bookshop.
Posted in 