Category: Reviews

A LETTER from SPAIN !!

One of the most rewarding parts of being a writer (on the Internet) is the responses I have gotten from all over the world.  India, Australia, Argentina, Great Britian, and now Spain.  Tanya is a working actor and has become interested in Billlie Holiday as a way to fine tune her musical career.

I thought my readers might enjoy her letter,

My name is Tanya R. and I’m an actress interested in training and developing my acting and singing abilities. I came to find your play and I was very lucky to find it (Scent of Magnolia)

I’ve read it and I have really enjoyed it. I hadn’t really gone in depth in Billie Holiday’s life or music. My only objective is to do some training with the play. I was born in Colombia, raised in both Colombia and England and presently live in Spain. I try to develop and work on the characters I play from what is the most difficult for me from a humanistic point of view. I try to work on a basis of affection, humbleness as a person, tenderness and respect with no judging, and I know that can be very very hard. I just think your play is an excellent opportunity to grow as an actress, and as a woman. I find your play very beautiful because though Billie Holiday’s life was so difficult, what attracts me so much is the way the character can be so close to you as you see/listen to her telling her story, so close.

There’s is a lot in it, told with affection and respect. Not only that. I am Colombian, and accent, background, my god, my profile is far from the character’s, which makes it more challenging to work on. I have had a look at your material, and I am very interested in reading all of it. The play with the 4 women seems so interesting to develop such different colours to the characters. Also I work a lot with my son’s friends in creations in video and theatre, they love acting so we do simple things in english as well. You have some material on short plays for young actors which I will be using no doubt.

I am very happy to hear from you and your work. I will let you know about my process, of course. As I said, my aim is to be a better actress and person and your play has the perfect ingredients for it.

A warm hello, Tanya

“Must Read” rating for “Butterflies & Bullets”

Eric Jones, a reviewer on BookReview.com, just wrote a lovely piece on “Butterflies and Bullets”, my book of Poetry, Essays and Musings. Click here to read it on their site, or scroll down for a reprint.

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Poetry 
Title: Butterflies & Bullets
Author: Trisha Sugarek
Rating:  Must Read!
Publisher: Trisha Sugarek
Reviewed by: Eric Jones

I knew Sugarek’s work in the past from her collection of short children’s plays, “Ten Minutes to Curtain”, which involve the complicated dynamics of growing up. Flannery O’Conner said that if you live through childhood then you have enough material to write forever, and Sugarek has been there and then some. Her short work for the stage has put her in the perfect position to transition from play to poetry with her new book, “Butterflies and Bullets”.

Even the title denotes the strange duality between innocence and loss, and that theme is prevalent throughout the work. Mostly in free form, Sugarek keeps everything in a minimalist range, lending focus to intimate moments like a man playing his Mandolin beside a fire, or the quiet landscape of the Serengeti just before rainfall. These truncated pieces of life feel like literary snapshots. These are Sugarek’s butterfly collection. Then, of course, there are the bullets.

The bullets are also set in free form, however they deal with much more happenings and are more narratively set. My favorite poem is one of these. “Hair Cut… Two Bits” chronicles the return of a barber from war-torn Europe in 1934 via a freighter into the Mississippi from the Gulf. The story, though scarcely a few pages, manages to convey the loss, struggle, and triumph of war given a single, near microscopic, experience. Not to mention that it’s all the more topical today, given the current mess in off the shore of New Orleans.

There are many that are like these, managing to say a lot with only a little. And given their accompanying illustrations by Lori Smaltz, which are printed small in keeping with the book’s minimalist structure, “Butterflies and Bullets” comes off splendidly. The collection feels complete and utterly whole, no piece of the pie excluded. Such close ups reveal that every place is connected. The ocean, if you look closely enough, looks just like rain on the blistering asphalt of your driveway. Shanty Irish curtains, at a certain scale, are indistinguishable from the sculpted wood of a Native American totem pole. This is the nature of Sugarek’s poetry, that when you pull back you see how different everything is, but when you put it under the microscope, a butterfly is really just a bullet with wings. 

 

Ann Purser reviews “Butterflies and Bullets”

British author Ann Purser had some lovely things to say about my book of poems:

“So, some fly joyously in the sun, alighting briefly, warming the heart – and then there’s the killing bullet, taking a straight path to the heart, bent on destruction. Trish’s poems are like that.

She had me hooked from the very first with Joy Filled Canine. Dog-lovers will recognize the essence of dog (not the smell) at once. There’s the joy, living for the day. ‘brandy eyes alight` – that’s it, in three words.

And Mandolin Man, so touching in its simplicity (and dogs again).

Then The Song of Agony – the bullet straight to the heart. A short tale of desperation, and again, pared down to a distillation of pain. There’s where Trish Sugarek’s considerable talent lies. Buy it, folks!”

(You can purchase “Butterflies and Bullets” right here on my online store.

Midwest Book Review of “Women Outside the Walls”

The Midwest Book Review rated Women Outside the Walls a ‘must read’. To see all the best books, visit their site:  http://www.midwestbookreview.com/