With high hopes and aspirations, the Pasadena Rose Poets will present their second book, “Not So Perfect Storm,” this week.
The tome is a collection of poems by its members.
Readers “can look forward to a bouquet of words that they will enjoy, that they will never forget, and that might even entice some people to write themselves. It’s about life experiences, what has worked for us, what hasn’t worked for us. So it’s really a mixture of different experiences rolling together into this tapestry of Not So Perfect Storm,” poet and PRP founder Gerda Govine Ituarte said about the book.
Ituarte also edited the book, which was created to celebrate the PRP’s 6th anniversary. It was published in Sept. 2022.
Over the years, PRP, founded in 2016, has read at events in various areas inside and outside Los Angeles County. Prior to the pandemic, the group has read poems at City Council meetings.
“We would read anywhere. We read in the street corners, we read at the Huntington, we’d read at City Council meetings, at the library, at the museums in town,” said Ituarte.
“Our motto is poetry in unexpected places.”
“For two years we read at city council meetings in the public comments section before the pandemic. And it wasn’t just about going and reading. It was about going to a city council meeting early, see how people came in and see what the issues were on the agenda. Based on that, we would pick one of the poems that we brought there to read. At one point, Terry Tornek, the former mayor, said in one of the council meetings that having the poetry readings slowed the process down. It allowed us to breathe before we jumped into the agenda. And each year that we did it, he provided a proclamation to the Rose Poets for our contribution to the city.”
The group’s members write not only because they love to write but also because they believe their words could make a difference, Ituarte added.
Their goal is “to have poetry flow within the fabric of Pasadena.”
“Poetry’s usually left out of everything. It’s music and dance and so on and so forth. And so we’re blazing a trail so that when people think of Pasadena, they’ll think of poetry.”
For the PRP founder, poetry does not only make a difference, it also slows everything down, allowing people to connect with the words.
“You can’t read poetry in a hurry. It doesn’t work. So it slows the pace down. It allows people to enter a space where the words connect with them in various ways. And it also has a before and after effect.”
“For us, it’s about allowing silence and pauses to make a difference, the words to make a difference, and to just get people into a space, even for three minutes where they can basically exhale.”
The group’s first collection was published in Sept. 2020.
Govine-Ituarte expressed hopes the nine-member PRP will publish its third collection after a couple of years.
Members of PRP include Teresa Mei Chuc, Kate Gale, Hazel Clayton Harrison, Gerda Govine Ituarte, Shahé Mankerian, Toni Mosley, Carla Sameth and Annette Wong.
To join the upcoming online event, sign up here. It will be presented via Zoom, this Thursday, January 19, from 5-6:30 p.m.
For more information call: 626-744-4066.
