Sharmagne Leland-St. John

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Sharmagne Leland-St. John
Poet Sharmagne Leland-St.John
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	United States/Lineal Descendant of The Confederated Colville Tribe of Nespelem, Washington
Spouse	Richard Sylbert (1991–2002)
Children	Daisy Alexandra Sylbert-Torres

Sharmagne Leland-St. John is a 21st-century poet. Leland-St. John is best known for the poem "I Said Coffee," for which she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. With its “deadpan puncturing of the male ego and its assumption of sexual implication where there is none,”^[1] this piece has become one of her more frequently published and requested poems. She has received a total of 17 Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2013 International Book Award honoring Excellence in Mainstream and Independent Publishing for best poetry anthology.

Early life[]

Her father Jerome was an animal trapper in the jungles of Tegucigalpa in Honduras. During her childhood he collected exotic animals with which to supply zoos and private estates. He also had a pheasant farm and quail ranch in Mexico City and eventually settled in Tarzana, California.

Leland-St. John's mother, child actress Roseanne Gahan, worked with Cecil B. DeMille. Sharmagne's maternal grandfather, John Harvey Gahan, was a child prodigy and virtuoso violinist in Canada, known as Arvé. Gahan married Josephine Morong Runnels, the granddaughter of Que Que Tas ^[2] of the Sanpoil (tribe) and chief of the Nespelem in the Pacific Northwest.

When Leland-St. John was three years old, her father left the family, sued for custody, won, and then placed her and her older sister in a Catholic convent. In 1958, her father returned to the U.S. and brought his daughters to live with him and his new wife in Tarzana, which caused his wife to leave him.

Career[]

In the mid-1960s she met and was dating Peter Yarrow from the folk singing group Peter, Paul and Mary. Through the group's road manager, she was introduced to guitarist Peter Walker with whom she began performing in concert and writing song lyrics. Under the name Peter and the Countess, they performed in venues such as The Fillmore East and West, The Psychedelic Super Market in Boston, The Ark in San Francisco, The Ash Grove in Los Angeles; they also formed the band Orient Express, which included Bruce Langhorne and Lowell George.

In the late 1960s, while working for songwriter Jimmy Webb, Leland-St. John began writing poetry and song lyrics and has collaborated with Peter Yarrow, Peter Walker, Darby Slick, Jefferson Airplane, Hedge Capers, Hedge and Donna, Wes Farrell and several other well-known composers. At age 19, she co-wrote two episodes of the TV series "The Beverly Hillbillies." Leland-St. John was close friends with actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski and was living with her boyfriend Jay Sebring until the Manson Family murders in August 1969.

In the 1970s, Leland-St. John acted in TV commercials and appeared in features and on TV. She returned to writing and published seven books of poetry and prose, co-wrote a book on motion picture design, and for the past 20 years, overseen the publication of the online journal Quill and Parchment.

Marriage[]

Leland-St. John was married to Richard Sylbert.^[3] They had two children: a boy, Nikolai, who lived for only a few hours (her poem “Tiny Warrior” was written about Nikolai), and a daughter, Daisy Alexandra (currently a costumer in the film industry).

In 2001, she designed her first film Tricks. She co-directed and co-produced the short film Being with Eddie^[4] in 2003. Her short film screenplay Butterfly Catcher was filmed by the Native American Film and TV Alliance (NAFATA) in 2004.

With a journalist, she co-wrote the memoir her husband had begun but left unfinished at the time of his death, titled Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (2006)).^[5]

Bibliography[]

• Unsung Songs (2003) ISBN 978-0-9764244-0-6 Quill and Parchment Press
• Silver Tears and Time (2006) ISBN 978-0-9764244-1-3 Quill and Parchment Press
• Contingencies (2008) ISBN 978-0-9764244-2-0 Quill and Parchment Press USA/WynterBlue Publishing Inc Canada
• Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (2006)– Greenwood/Praeger ISBN 978-0-275-98690-2
• La Kalima (2010) ISBN 978-0-9764244-3-7 Quill and Parchment Press USA/WynterBlue Publishing Inc., Canada
• Empty Shoes: Poems on the Hungry and the Homeless ~ Editor Patrick T. Randolph ISBN 978-1-4495-1779-3 Popcorn Press (Oct. 2009)
• Many Mountains Moving – ISBN 978-1-886976-23-8
• Literary House Review ~ (Fall 2008)
• Emerging Urban Poets (June 2008)
• The League of Laboring Poets ISSN 1937-6499 (Best of Issue Award)
• Villanelles (March 2012); edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali; ISBN 978-0-307-95786-3; Everyman's Library/Random House UK
• Cradle Songs (April 2012) Editor: ISBN 978-0-9764244-5-1. Quill and Parchment Press
• Taj Mahal Review, edited by Dr. Santosh Kumar ISSN 0972-6004 Publisher: Cyberwit.net Webpage: tajmahalreview.com
• “Charles Manson: The Final Words” (2017)
• “Beverly Hills: 100 Years, 100 Stories” (2017)
• A Raga for George Harrison (October 2020) ISBN 978-93-88125-90-1 Taj Mahal Press/Cyberwit.net
• IMAGES: A Collection of Ekphrastic Poetry ISBN 978-93-88319-55-3 Publisher: Cyberwit.net

References[]

External links[]

• Sharmagne Leland-St. John at IMDb
• Sharmagne at Interviewing Hollywood
• Quill & Parchment Poetry Site
• River Run International Film Festival
• [1]