California Botanic Garden welcomes you to celebrate words amongst the wildflowers with A Garden of Verses Poetry Festival.
Kicking off both national Poetry Month and CalBG's Wildflower Month, guests are invited to walk the paths amongst spring blooms and happen upon multiple poetry stations scattered throughout the Mesa gardens. All ages are welcome at this celebration of the power of poetry to increase our bond with nature. Join us for hands-on poetry activity stations where you will be guided in creating your own nature poetry, and listen to local poets recite verses reflecting on the themes of NATURE, GARDENS, the ENVIRONMENT, and the HEAVENS.
This event is free with Garden Admission.
Garden of Verses features poetry stations hosted by:
Fourth Saturdays: Poetry at the Helen Renwick Library
Southern California Haiku Study Group
The Pasadena Poets
All About Town Poets
We welcome the following Poets Participating in A Garden of Verses
(List subject to change)
OAK OVERLOOK: Fourth Saturdays: Poetry at the Helen Renwick Library
GALLOWAY, LUCIA
Lucia Galloway’s three poetry collections include The Garlic Peelers, co-winner of the Quill’s Edge Press 2014 chapbook contest; Venus and Other Losses; and Playing Outside. Recent poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, The Sow’s Ear, Nimrod, Moria, and Mid-American Review. Her new book, Some Words for Meanwhile, is due from Future Cycle Press in October. Lucia co-hosts Claremont’s Fourth Saturdays Poetry and enjoys singing in several choral groups.
GREENBAUM-MAYA, KAREN
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, former German major and restaurant reviewer, and two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her work in fairy tales and dream interpretation and shaggy dog stories, and her obsession with Kafka and flirtation with Buber, have led her inevitably to prose poems. Her work has appeared in journals including Comstock Poetry Review, B O D Y, Rappahannock Poetry Review, CHEST, and Spillway. Kattywompus Press publishes her chapbooks Burrowing Song, Eggs Satori, and, Kafka’s Cat. Kelsay Books publishes The Book of Knots and their Untying. The Beautiful Leaves, a collection of poems about her late husband, is forthcoming from Pelekinesis Press in Autumn 2023. She co-curates Fourth Saturdays, a poetry series in Claremont, California. Her first complete sentence was, “Look at the moon!”
KAPLAN, GENEVIEVE
Genevieve Kaplan is the author of In the ice house, winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation's poetry publication prize, and three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including recent work in Third Coast, Thrush, and Poetry Northwest. Find her online at https://genevievekaplan.com/ .
MC CONNEL, FRANCES RUHLEN
Frances Ruhlen McConnel has been a nature lover and nature poet since her wanderings during childhood years in Tennessee and her youth in Alaska. Her totem animals are the moose, the wolf, and the cow—the latter from generations of dairy farmers in her father’s family. She is retired from teaching in the Creative Writing Department at UCR and now co-chairs with Lucia Galloway the steering committee that runs the Claremont Public Library’s Poetry Reading Series, Fourth Saturdays. She has published two books of poetry, Gathering Light,
and The Direction of Longing and a chapbook of mostly haiku, White Birches, Black Water.
THE CULTIVAR GARDEN GAZEBO Southern California Haiku Study Group
JACKIE CHOU
A writer of Japanese short form poetry whose haiku has appeared in Frogpond, Enchanted Garden, Haiku in Action, The Haiku Dialogue, haikuniverse, The Asahi Haikuist Network, and other publications. She also meets regularly with Kathabela Wilson's group to write collaboratively with other poets.
D'ELLEN
Clinical Social Worker by day, artistic poet by night. She uses art and poetry as interventions for healing troubled children with trauma. She is hoping to win the lotto soon so she can actually retire.
WILLIAM SCOTT GALASSO
Author of eighteen books of poetry and published in numerous journals. He has appeared on radio and TV programs in New York, Washington, and New Mexico-- as well as California.
CASSADEY O'REILLY-HAHN
A poet with an MA from Claremont Graduate University. He is an editor for Foothill: A Poetry Journal that highlights graduate student voices. He works for Deluxe, a company that localizes TV and Film for a global audience. In his free time, Cassady writes Haiku for his personal blog, orhawrites and his Instagram @cassady_orha. Cassady currently resides in Redlands, California, with his wife, Anabelle, and their two pugs, Wyatt and Jasper.
CHARLES HARMON
Started writing stories in kindergarten and was first published in the 4th grade. He got serious about poetry in high school when he began writing songs for his girlfriend. Chares loves to travel and has worked relief in three war zones. He enjoys indulging his wonderful wife and kids.
YVETTE NICOLE KOLODJI
An artist and poet, she is the moderator for the Southern California Haiku Study Group. She has been published in many haiku journals and was a winner of the 2023 Santa Clarita Sidewalk Poetry Contest.
BONA M. SANTOS
She has thrown her passion for writing into exploring haiku and related short forms. Her background in marine science research has made her a disciplined and observant student of all things haiku.
JIE TIAN
A librarian, poet and bookmaker. She practices the Earth Arts through tending a small garden on the ancestral land of the Tongva-Gabrielino People. Her most recent works explore indigeneity, ecology and the poet’s calling.
DENISE DUMARS
A poet of the genres. Her most recent collection has a long form poem nominated for the Rhysling Award. She will be a featured reader at Colbalt Poets 5/6/25 and will be reading at LitFest in May as well.
KATHABELA WILSON
Echoes her mother’s international upbringing and life long ideas and hopes for peace. Her poetry and art build communities based on poetic and emotional elements that span the globe. She enjoys traveling the world with her husband, Rick.
THE SAGE GALLERY: The Pasadena Poets
BARRESI, DOROTHY
Dorothy Barresi is the author of What We Did While We Made More Guns (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018); American Fanatics (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010); Rouge Pulp (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002); Post- Rapture Diner (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), winner of the American Book Award; and All of the Above (Beacon Press, 1991), winner of the Barnard College New Women Poets Prize. She is also the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is an emeritus professor at California State University at Northridge and lives in the San Fernando Valley.
FITZPATRICK, MARY
Mary Fitzpatrick’s poems have been finalists for the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and the Slapering Hol Chapbook Award; short-listed for the Fish Publishing Prize; featured in Mississippi Review, Atlanta Review and North American Review as contest finalists; and published in such journals as Agenda (UK), Briar Cliff Review, Hunger Mountain, Miramar, The Paterson Review, Pratik, Silver Birch, Red Canary, Terrain.org, West Trestle Review, plus ten anthologies. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz with an MFA from UMass Amherst, she is a fourth-generation Angeleno who
lives in Pasadena and feels at home in Ireland.
LAFONTAINE, BEVERLY
Beverly Lafontaine is a Los Angeles-born poet and playwright. She has enjoyed four productions of her plays in the Los Angeles area and has had her poetry published in various poetry journals and anthologies, including online journals Poets Reading the News and MORIA as well as print journals Spillway, Beyond the Lyric Moment, Blue Satellite, and So Luminous the Wildflowers. Four of her poems appear in Waves, an anthology of women poets published by the AROHO Foundation. Her cross-genre projects include six of her poems incorporated into Walk a Mile in My Shoes, a sculptural art project erected by the City of Los Angeles in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, and Scenes from Sarajevo in which she collaborated with composer Tom Flaherty to produce a prize-winning chamber music piece for voice, cello, and viola.
LIPKIN, ELLINE
Elline Lipkin’s first book, The Errant Thread, was chosen by Eavan Boland for the Kore Press First Book Award. Her second, Girls’ Studies, explores contemporary girlhood. A Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women, she teaches independent poetry workshops and served as Poet Laureate of Altadena from 2016-2018.
PACHT, JUDITH
Judith Pacht’s book Summer Hunger (Tebot Bach), won the 2011 PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. Her recent poetry books Infirmary for a Private Soul (Tebot Bach) and a chapbook A Cumulus Fiction were published in March 2019. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Pacht was first place winner in the Georgia Poetry Society’s Edgar Bowers competition. Her poem KIN recently appeared on Verse Daily and her work is published in anthologies and journals (Ploughshares, Runes, Nimrod, Phoebe.) Her poetry has been translated into Russian and published in Foreign Literature (Moscow, Russia). Pacht reads at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, at Charleston’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival (twice) and she has read and taught Political Poetry at Denver’s annual LitFest at the Lighthouse and at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles.
PERI, CECE
Cece Peri’s poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologiesShe received two Pushcart Prize nominations and awards from NoirCon, the Arroyo Arts Collective’s “Poetry in the Windows,” and honorable mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize. Cece studied filmmaking at NYU and worked below-the-line, in various capacities, on many independent films. She loves combining poetry and filmmaking in her work. Born and raised in New York, she made Los Angeles her home for the past twenty years. She now divides her time between those two great cities. Fun fact: When she’s in LA, the book she’s looking for is inevitably on her nightstand in Brooklyn.
RUSCIO, BETH
Beth Ruscio is the author of Speaking Parts (2020), winner of the Brick Road Poetry Prize and her work’s been widely anthologized, most recently in Dark Ink: Poetry Inspired by Horror. She’s been Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated, and won finalist honors for The Wilder Prize, The Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, The Tupelo Quarterly Prize, and the Two Sylvias Prize. A professional actor for 50 years, Ruscio has graced local and national stages, and her work can be seen on screens large and small. Her most recent publication credit was an essay, In praise of humble ingredients, exalted, and a poem, Summer Calling, which appear in Outlaw Theatre (Oct. 2022) by Padua Playwrights Press/TCG.
SANDSTROM, CATHIE
A military brat, Cathie Sandstrom has lived in five countries and ten states. Twice a Pushcart nominee, her work is on the website of the Academy of American Poets at poets.org, and has appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Ekphrasis, and Lyric, among others. Anthologies include Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Her poem “You, Again” is in the artists’ book collection at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She co-authored Eclipse Illumined, a collaboration of poems and images with the artist/poet Thom Cooney Crawford. She serves on the Advisory Board of the National Veterans Foundation, for whom she blogged for Huffington Post; and on the editorial board of The Arbor magazine for the Knights of the Vine International Wine Brotherhood. Cathie lives in Sierra Madre, against the San Gabriels, where she still expects to hear from the Pentagon any day.
TERZI, JUDITH
Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects as well as of five chapbooks, including Casbah, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, and Sharing Tabouli, Judith Terzi's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals and anthologies. Her poems have garnered prizes and have received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. One of her poems, "Ode to Malala Yousafzai," was featured on a "Heroines" episode of BBC/Radio 3's "Words and Music." She taught French for many years at Polytechnic School in Pasadena as well as English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. Now, Somehow, a new chapbook of poems on confronting a pandemic, cancer, and other health-related concerns, was published in 2022. Visit her website at sharingtabouli.com.
WATERWISE GARDEN: All About Town Poets
CARLSON, RALPH
R. S. Carlson (Ralph), retired from Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA in 2014. His poems have appeared in The Texas Review; Poet Lore; The Cape Rock; Genre; The Hawai'i Review; Sunstone; War, Literature and the Arts; Colere; Slake; Whale Road Review, et. al. Carlson’s poetry book, Waiting to Say Amen, is available in print or electronic formats
CLEMENTS, MARCYN DEL
Claremont resident, a feisty octogenarian, has over 900 works in print. Her first book, Shinrin-Yoku, is available on Amazon, and her 2nd book, Komorebi, will soon be out on Kindle, Lulu and 45 other platforms! When not traveling for birds, bugs, flowers, fish or other critters, she lives alone at home with some 50 oversized koi and goldfish, their mouths always open.
DAVIDSON, CHRIS
Chris Davidson is a poet and teacher who lives in Long Beach. His chapbook EASY MEAL was published in 2020 by Californios Press. His most recent publications include poetry in The Mockingbird, The MacGuffin, Citric Acid, and Social Alternatives.
FAY, IGNATIUS
Ignatius (1950-2022) was a disabled invertebrate paleontologist who wrote poetry in various Japanese short form styles. His work has appeared in many of the most respected print and online journals. He collaborated with Irene Golas on a collection of poems, Breccia, 2012. Ignatius edited the HSA monthly email newsletter, and has done the layout for Frogpond and the annual members’ anthology. He was Regional Coordinator for the Ontario Region of Haiku Canada.
KOLODJI, YVETTE NICOLE
Yvette Nicole Kolodji is an artist and a poet. She is the Southern California Haiku Study Group moderator and the Haiku Poets of Northern California’s (HPNC’s) membership secretary. In 2025, she was a judge for the Poetry Out Loud Competition for Placer County and for the HPNC San Francisco International Rengay Contest as well as an Activate Delegate for Arts for LA. Her poetry can be found in many haiku journals. She has also given haiku presentations and readings for poetry meetings or conferences.
TURNIER, REGINALD
Reginald Turnier is a writer, musician, and peace activist dividing his time between Jacmel Haiti and Los Angeles where he lives with his lovely wife the Rev Jessica Smith, son Civil, and daughter baby Emma.
WILLIAMSON, JOHN R.
https://www.instagram.com/john_r_williamson/ Williamson teaches English at The Gooden School, a private k-8 Episcopal School in Sierra Madre, CA. He published a poetry and art journal called Grapevine and won the Cornerstone Poetry Slam in Chicago. He continues to write and perform with his band, the c’est la vies.
