GLENDALE — The City of Glendale offers poetry workshops at two libraries. On Saturday, December 13, there was a poetry reading and workshop at the Glendale Central Library, led by Poet Laureate Raffi Wartanian, with guest poets Jen Siraganian, Sehba Sarwar and Nancy Miller Gomez.
The thought-provoking and educational event started with poetry readings by each guest poet. Later, they gave several prompts to choose from. After 20 minutes of writing, the participants read the poems they had written during the workshop.
Wartanian, who teaches writing at UCLA, has an impressive background. He is a poet, writer, educator, composer, singer and musician. He plays the oud and other Armenian instruments and promotes Western Armenian poetry. He has released two CDs of original music. He serves on the advisory board of the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). He holds an MFA in writing from Columbia University. His essays and poems have appeared in many literary magazines.
Wartanian has been the Glendale Public Library’s Poet Laureate since 2023, during which time he has organized poetry workshops and published two anthologies featuring poems by workshop participants.
Siraganian is an Armenian-American writer, educator and former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, Calif. Author of the chapbook Fracture (Deconstructed Artichoke Press), she has been profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose’s The Mercury News. Her poetry has won the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize and has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review, Cortland Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus. She has received funding from the Money for Women / Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Community of Writers, and Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Her current manuscript was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, the Perugia Press Prize, and the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, and the Vassar Miller Prize. A former managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, she is a current Lucas Artist Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center.
Sarwar serves as Altadena Co-Poet Laureate (2024-26). Sarwar’s writings and art tackle displacement, migration, and women’s issues. Nancy Miller Gomez is a poet from Santa Cruz, California. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
