27 May 25
Dear Friends, Coming right up! I’m joining the line up at the LA Poets’ Society Speakeasy, Friday, May 30, 7 PM, Espresso Bar, 909 San Fernando Rd., to raise a ruckus with words and harmonica about the war machine’s deathly grip and the earth’s irrepressible beauties. Join us!
Love=Peace,
Susan
A new chapbook of poetry forthcoming from Shanti Arts Press. The title displays the central concerns of the collection. More to come as the publication date nears!
When I returned to California from graduate school in England (U of Kent, Canterbury), I discovered the first edition of Jerome Rothenberg’s radical, brilliant anthology: Technicians of the Sacred. He created the term ethnopoetics to recognize the spoken, chanted, and sung works of tribal cultures to be significant contributions to the world of poetry, and not prose into which most were flattened in translation. Rothenberg’s work was central to changing that practice.
Inhis final anthology (he died in May of this year), The Serpent and The Fire: Poetries of the Americas from Origins to Present, released this month from University of California Press, Rothenberg, with co-editor Javier Taboada, demonstrates the magnificent breadth and spirit of the poetic voice. He evolves ethnopoetics into a spacious embrace, omnipoetics:a gathering of poetry from all parts of the Western Hemisphere drawn from several millennia written in European and Indigenous languages.
My book, Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California, was inspired and informed by Jerry’s vision. I am honored to have an excerpt from it included The Serpent and the Fire.
Peace=Love, Susan
Note: Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California is available as an audiobook via your library and Spotify.
Dear Friends, Join us me at one of Southern California’s most important Native American sacred sites and the location of the large, ancient village of Povungna. All are welcome at this very special event where I have been invited to read about Povungnafrom Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California.
Sit with us in the ceremonial circle under the oaks at this rare event!
For millennia, Povungna has played a central role in Southern California Native cultural practices.
Location: Park in Lot G2, off Bellflower Blvd, (search: California State University, Long Beach; turn left into the campus, left at the first street, left into the lot; park in the back section.)
Bring a sweater. Free parking. Bring your words and songs to share!
I will have books available to sign. The Sacred Sites audiobook, a national award finalist, featuring Native American actor Kalani Queypo, Peter Coyote, myself and flute by Ernest Siva, is available on Spotify and at libraries!
May our hearts be kind, brave, and peaceful, Susan
Dear Friends, Shimmering on wild branches in the Santa Monica mountains is spring light illuminating the blossoms of dusty pink laurel sumac and the white, pink, or pale lavender ceanothus blooms- sometimes called California lilac–a fragrant reminder of life’s vigor and beauty that must be celebrated!
Susan
Join me and a cast of poets, musicians, storytellers in a spirited Earth Day Cabaret!
Saturday, 20 April 2024, 2 PM to 3:30 PM at Beyond Baroque: 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291
Free! Easy Parking! Refreshments!
RESERVE NOW! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/earth-day-cabaret-tickets-881067234817
In person and live streamed on the Beyond Baroque YouTube channel.
April 5. 2024
Dear Friends,
Early spring rolls in with a hubbub of rain, wild winds, and hail. The ceanothus in the Santa Monica Mountains bloom thickly, sweetly pink, white, lavender. The bees fill the blossoms. Despite the grim human news, spring vitality is on full display. I am so grateful!
Looking Ahead: Please mark your calendars: April 20, 2-4 PM, at Beyond Baroque on Venice Blvd, a poetry and music environmental extravaganza. I am bringing my harmonica! More about this next time.
THIS SUNDAY, April 7, 2024 from 1:30 to 4 p.m.
Join us at The Wild Eye Pub, 535 Mill St Grass Valley, CA 95945
A book launch and signing for
Looking for Love in the Sears Catalog
(by Beverly Leach, (Ruth Ghio’s given name) JOIN US!
“I was born in the Fred Finch Home for Unwed Mothers in Fargo, North Dakota,” is the opening salvo of Ruth Ghio’s memoir, Looking for Love in the Sears Catalog. The memoir recounts the early years of Ghio’s eventful life which began nearly 92 years ago.
Available now on Amazon!
Accompanying Ruth will be Julie Valin, poet, member of The Poetry Crashers, and book design guru; Donna Hanelin, poet, writer, and creative writing teacher; Julia Connor, poet, sculptor, painter, writer, and twice poet laureate of Sacramento; Susan Suntree, poet, performer, and essayist; Maxima Kahn, writer, poet, and creativity coach; Kit Bailey, percussionist, and Laura Pendell, poet and writer.
Here is the full text of the praise/blurb I wrote for this memorable book:
Ruth Ghio’s memoir about her terrifying childhood in a poor, alcoholic Finnish immigrant family in North Dakota participates in the American literary tradition wherein nature providescrucialsolace, affecting the outcome of a story. Even Upton Sinclair’s grim novel, The Jungle, about the degradation and despair of a Lithuanianimmigrant family working in the Chicago stockyards concludes with the main character, Jurgis, finding redemption in Socialism and in the green vistas of the natural world beyond the stockyard’s gray stench. Nature fortifies both body and soul, inspiring a fresh vision of what must be done to live an authentically better life. Similarly, in the worst circumstances of her childhood, the mysterious beauties of the natural world stirred in Ruth a sense that life spread wide and wondrous in the territory beyond her family. Each chapter begins with a short poem that in direct language and images evokes the resilient and curious spirit of the girl, the author herself, who is the protagonist of this memorable story.
Once there was a child sitting on the porch after a scorching day.
Eating the first summer watermelon, tasting the sweetness,
the juices running down her chin.
The sun descending between two prairie hills, like a golden loaf of bread.
And she asked herself, “Where did it go?”
In turns horrifying and inspirational, Ruth’s memoir is a vulnerable, penetrating, vivid meditation on the profound deprivations of body, mind, and spirit that drove her parents Westin an attempt to grasp their American dream. And she bravely contemplates the life-long effort it has taken her to create her life out of those nearly devastating beginnings. From her secret childhood dreams shaped by reading the Sears Catalogue, to her family’s flight from North Dakota to the Golden Land-–her mother’s name for California, to a brief stay on the Oregon coast, to her teenage years in Oakland and Richmond tenements, Ruth’s story is quintessential; an American life told with wrenching tenderness.
Peace for All Beings!
Susan
I’m well! Yes, the current moment is deeply challenging and heart wrenching, but we continue to have our work to do to renew our cultures and to learn to live in balance with the natural world.
Here is the link to the marvelous article about Sacred Sites by Victor Monin published in the bilingual (French/English) journal: Art et science/Art and Science.
L’histoire de la Terre en vers libres : traduction inédite et commentaire d’un extrait du poème Sacred Sites par Susan Suntree
The history of Earth in free verse: a French translation and discussion of an excerpt from the poem Sacred Sites by Susan Suntree
It was published last year in the bilingual on-line journal, Art et science/Art and Science. I urge you to take a look because the journal has beautiful visuals accompanying most of the articles.
Here’s the link: https://www.calameo.com/iste-group/read/00584164653ee853f8704?trackersource=library
Art et science/Art and Science
Vol 7 No.2 2023 Page 61-71
You can read an English translation on my website:
https://susansuntree.com/2023/12/29/2874/
Take good care. I will write again soon.
Love=Peace
Susan
Dear Friends,
By now the front yard maple is fully in leaf fall, brightening the gray sidewalk with
yellows and deep reds. The tree’s unwavering response to the season encourages me. Keep the wheel turning! And this upcoming event, part of the ETHOS FILM FESTIVAL, reminds me that there is plenty of useful work to do.
I will participate on a panel at the festival discussing Sheila Laffey’s short film about the effort to save the Ballona Wetlands. The film includes clips from the street theater troupe, FrogWorks and the Earth Water Air LA giant puppet trek across the city that I co-founded. Art in Action! If you live in the area, join us! Tell your LA friends!
In Peace, Susan
Dear Friends, Leaves on the maple tree in my front yard have begun their flaming, drifting fall. What a good time to celebrate the irreplaceable WS Merwin whose life and works model the artist as activist. My presentation will be about how Merwin, Snyder, (and a bit about Robert Graves) have responded to war and its impacts on the earth. Do poets have any influence at all? Come hear some stories you’ve probably never heard!
Celebrate the distinguished poet, W.S. Merwin with a screening of Even Though the Whole World is Burning, a documentary about his life and work, presented and accompanied by a panel and readings from Susan Suntree, Cheri Colby [Davis] Langdell, Tim Langdell, and Daniel E. Lambert.
Refreshments, readings, and selections from the award-winning documentary.
Saturday, November 4, 2023, at 7 PM Free!
Beyond Baroque in Venice and live on Beyond Baroque YouTube.
Refreshments, readings, and selections from the award-winning documentary.
You won’t want to miss this!
With dedication to peace (life!),
Susan
Dear Friends,
Many indigenous cultures celebrate the fall equinox as a time when completion and harvest portend a new year, a new cycle, imminent spring. I am celebrating my own renewal after a gravelly year that culminated in Alaska where I saw the Aurora Borealis and so much more. Soon I’ll post photos on my website and social media. I distinctly recommend the train from Anchorage to Fairbanks!
And I’ll soon share with you information about a couple of new, unusual publications! Stay tuned!
Please join us Sunday afternoon, 22 October, at 4:30, when I’ll read with the excellent poet, Ambika Talwar. My selection and slides from Sacred Sites reveal roots of the climate crisis, and Dear Traveler and new poems ponder how we might live now. See flyer below or the events page on this site.
With brightening leaves and the (most likely) coming rains,
Susan
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