Mima Pereira

Her mother crossed the Brooklyn Bridge so she could be born in Manhattan. She never appreciated her sentiment, through it does remain poetic. She came through the Panama Canal in 1932, landed in California, where her father had signed a contract with RKO studios to write write for Carol Lombard. She settled in Beverly Hills, where for the next 15 years she made side trips to schools in Hollywood, Pasadena and New Hampshire. In the summer of 1948 she came down with polio. She will never know, of course, how much it changed her life, or informed her poetry, which she began her to write in the late seventies. Her first published poem was in Helen Friedland’s Poetry L.A. It was followed by many published poems, including an honorable mention in Sculpture Garden’s Anne Stanford’s Poetry Contest. Poetry for her is not about publishing, but the miracle of poetry that keeps your feet on the ground while flying in disturbing directions. Ms. Pereira lives with her husband, architect Arthur Pereira, in Brentwood, California.