Pasadena Rose Poets Poetry Collection 2019: Reflection. Resistance. Reckoning. Resurrection.

The Pasadena Rose Poets are "unobtrusive pause creators." We use our words to allow humanity to pause and breathe deeply. Poetry leaves its mark-not always visible-but imprinted on us and our audience in ways that we may never know. We are a chorus of voices stretched across cultures. Poetry gifts us with a third eye and ear that slows us down to look and see, to hear murmurs and whispers that get under our skin and live in our heads until we let the words land on the page. We fly, soar as time, space and freedom joins us. An NEA, National Endowment for the Arts, grant to the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division created the winds of change that established The Pasadena Rose Poets in 2016. Nine published poets were chosen to initiate a lunchtime poetry reading program at the Pasadena Senior Center in 2016 and in the Pasadena Council Chambers in 2018. We are also know as "Citizen Poets," who initiated and continued to read at City Council meetings since 2017. As Mayor Terry Tornek remarked at one of the Council meetings, I believe that because of the poetry readings, the meetings are more civil.