Sylvia Levinson has lived in California since 1962 and in San Diego since 1974. Always considered a good writer, her skills were applied to developing training manuals, sales and marketing materials, policies and procedures, until she went to work at the Old Globe Theater in 1991. In this artistic environment, where her sales management skills were utilized to sell the creative product of live theater, she discovered poetry as a means of expression.
Her poems address a spectrum of life experience – the joys and pains of childhood, family, parenthood, love, loss and lust, as well as the philosophical and humorous aspects of growing older. In recent years, reflecting on nature and the human relationship to the natural world has become prominent in her work.
Early childhood roots on an Ohio dairy farm and growing up years in the Catskill Mountain area of New York State imprinted an appreciation for landscape, animal and plant life. This was further enhanced when she attended college at Alfred University in the picturesque Finger Lakes Region of New York State’s Southern Tier.
She continues to seek out and be nourished by natural settings – a monastery in the San Diego mountains, the wildly rugged coast of Oregon, the sun glinting off Washington’s Puget Sound, hiking the Red Rocks of Sedona, a forest on Maui, a trail in the Snowy Range of Wyoming, a cabin in the pines in Idyllwild, or sitting under the orange tree in her own garden, watching the hummingbirds among wisteria and morning glories. This point of view is the focus of her book, Gateways: Poems of Nature, Meditation and Renewal, A Self-Guided Book of Discovery, which was published by Caernarvon Press in December, 2005.
Publication includes Snowy Egret, City Works, Tidepools, Magee Park Anthology, Poetic Matrix, Acorn Review and The Writing Center anthologies and forthcoming in The Mindfulness Bell.
In 1997, her poem “Lotus” was named Best Poem in City Works. She was awarded 2nd place, Unpublished Manuscript by San Diego Book Awards in 2003 for a 10-poem collection titled, “Of the Body.” In 2004, she was First Prize recipient in the poetry contest of The American Society on Aging for “Ladies Singing, Ladies Dancing.” San Diego African-American Writers and Artists, Inc. honored her work “Spoon” in 2004 and "I Watch You Breathe," in 2006. Featured readings include Claire de Lune, The Healing Point, First Mondays at City Wok, Second Sunday at Open Door Books, Barnes and Noble/Hazard Center, My Backyard and D.G. Wills. (see Home Page for upcoming appearances.)
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