Catching Fire: the Los Angeles Wildfires, S.A. Griffin and Richard Modiano, editors. From Rose of Sharon Press/Three Rooms Press
Sometimes a project comes together, born out of a need to commune with others, to share our grief, to DO something, anything and everything we can, in addition to donating money, little drops in the bucket, whatever we can afford.
I sat in my New York City apartment watching Los Angeles burn, as I’d watched New Orleans drown, as I’d watched Puerto Rico collapse. So many disasters. The closest to me was when Hurricane Sandy hit our area. I was unaffected except for loss of water and electricity, still able to climb 13 flights of stairs and to do a little, a very little, to help. Donate clothes, food, water, and that little bit of money.
And write some articles for the Villager, when I still wrote for them, some poems, some songs. Does it help anyone but the individual artist? I don’t know.
Growing up, I always thought the Bay Area was the cool place and started visiting and hanging out there in my late teens or early twenties. I never set foot in Los Angeles until many years later, after I had already started writing and performing. I bonded with the city, with the people, with the venues, with my NYC friends who relocated there, all of which resonated with me in ways San Francisco and Berkeley never did. I made cherished new friends and connections and had my most recent collection, Birthdays Before and After published by Beyond Baroque Press, located in Venice. I was around for the first days of Punk Hostage Press up and have participated in many of their events.
The only place outside of NYC and LA that has my heart is Puerto Rico.
In 2024, we watched in horror and grief as over one million acres of land burned, landmarks and homes destroyed. Heroic firefighters, those employed by the city or state, volunteers, underpaid hires of “private” fire companies without adequate equipment or insurance, fire fighters from other states, fire fighters crossing the border from Mexico to help.
As S.A. Griffin recounts in his introduction, Kat Georges, an Orange County native, and I spoke about the need to do something and Nicca Ray, an LA living in NYC, and I joined in and Kat called SA to check in and recount the conversations and, as SA writes, After I put down the phone, the bells rang.
S.A.’s “Beat brother,” Richard Modiano, stepped in with an editorial assist and Kat and her husband, Peter Carlaftes, publishers/editors of Three Rooms Press stepped up to help bring it to fruition. I am very honored to have played a small part in the birth of this volume and to be included.
Catching Fire is filled with love, loss, grief, and hope. What else is there?
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Get your copy of Catching Fire at https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Angeles-Wildfires-February/dp/1513677713/
Puma Perl is a poet, writer, and performer and the author of two chapbooks, and three full-length poetry collections including Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque Books.) She’s the front woman and primary lyricist in The Puma Perl Band, which brings spoken word together with rock and roll. She’s received five awards from the New York Press Association in recognition of her journalism and was the recipient of the 2016 Acker Award in the category of writing. In 2024, with musician Joe Sztabnik, she released a record album, “Under Tenement Skies,” available onBandcamp.com and you can read more on Substack, https://substack.com/@pumaperl.
