Foto Essay: One Day in the Life of LitFest In the Dena

5 de Mayo Was No Match for Poetry
Michael Sedano

The first weekend in May arrived with a full schedule of poetry readings in communities across the land. The nation's cultural life appears fully re-awakened in the wake of the GOPlague years that kept the nation sequestered and isolated. Literary events were stiff competition for Cinco de Mayo stuff.

This was particularly the case in Altadena and Pasadena, California, where a two-day book and reading festival, "LitFest In the Dena 2024" filled the elegantly cavernous halls comprising Mountain View Mausoleum.

Aside from a pizza truck and a tea purveyor, the business of the annual LitFest is literature. Festival organizers, Light Bringer Project (link) and literary journal Locavore Lit LA (link), managed five simultaneous panels in chapel, garden, and gallery spaces.

Choosing a program among hundreds of readers across two days, posed painful decisions.
Listeners seeking the Poetry Hall found themselves seated halfway into the mausoleum's focal point, its 180-foot-long Great Gallery where sixty-four varieties of Italian marble and tile work, stained glass windows, and mural-covered vaulted ceilings created a sublime setting for poets.

La Bloga-Tuesday shared a few Sunday hours at the festival, giving us time with the
"Pasadena Rose Poets", including Hazel Clayton Harrison, Carla Sameth, Gerda Govine, and Damian; "Embodied Landscapes Water, Wildlife, and the Geographies that Shape Us", featuring Sehba Sarwar, Erika Ayón, Olga García Echeverría, Jamie Asaye FitzGerald, and Alicia Vogl Saenz.

I attended with a special focus upon Golden Foothills Press' book release (link) and reading celebrating the work of Altadena's Co-Poet Laureate, Carla Sameth, and Peter J. Harris. Harris is editor of the anthology (link).

Publisher Dr. Thelma T. Reyna can finally relax with the months-long labor of bringing the
anthology to life, from idea to actuality.

The Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology 2024 features over a hundred writers. Publisher Thelma T. Reyna used her LitFest time allocation to invite readings from the book by Carla Sameth, Hazel Clayton Harrison, Sehba Sarwar, Lester Lennon, Mary Torregrossa, Pauli Dutton, Don Kingfisher Campbell, Elline Lipkin, GT Foster, Jackie Chou, Victor Cass, Dra. Martha Rivas, Sarah Flores, Emily Silich, and John Martinez.