Glendale’s two Poet Laureates share one stage

Reading poetry can frustrate some people, while it can calm and inspire others. When two multicultural poet laureates come together, you can expect a day filled with thought-provoking questions and satisfying answers, inviting everyone to join and feel part of our vibrant community.

Glendale Central Library at 222 E. Harvard Street will host a free poetry event on Saturday, September 26, from 11 am to 2 pm. Poet Laureate Raffi Joe Wartanian will present the third annual Jewel City Review (JCR), an anthology of poems by poets with varying levels of expertise. Some took poetry workshops organized by Wartanian; others participated in ARTful Conversations at Brand Library & Art Center, a collaborative poetry workshop led by poet Tina Demirdjian and art historian Valerie Taylor. The other guest poets will include Kim Shuck (Poet Laureate of San Francisco, 2017-2021) and Rhonda Mitchell (Poet Laureate of Altadena).

Since 2023, through the community poetics gatherings, the Poet Laureate Program has invited contributors of all ages, experiences, and language backgrounds to discover that poetry belongs not only to professional writers or the pages of books; it belongs to anyone willing to pay attention, wonder, and speak.

The event also marks the passing of the torch. The City of Glendale and the Library, Arts, & Culture Department announced Tina Demirdjian as the next poet laureate in July, and she will begin her post in September 2026.

The outgoing laureate: Raffi Joe Wartanian

Raffi Joe Wartanian is Armenian from Baltimore. He lives in Glendale with his Armenian wife and two children.

Wartanian is multicultural and has a range of talents. He is a poet, educator, musician, and composer. He became Glendale’s first poet laureate in 2023. During his tenure, he invited several poets to read their poems and teach poetry at Glendale libraries. He brought together an audience and participants, creating a safe, welcoming environment where creativity flowed. Many participants overcame their fear of writing and submitted their poems to the annual Jewel City Review.

During his tenure, the Poet Laureate Program has united writers and readers through 12 workshop-readings with 33 featured poets at six locations across the city. These quarterly workshop-readings culminated in a new annual poetry magazine, the Jewel City Review. In its first year, JCR published 17 individual poems by 13 poets. In its second year, JCR published 112 individual poems by 54 poets. Now in its third year, JCR is publishing 91 poems by 42 poets.

Wartanian said, “We have also organized special events–including Celebrating with Pride: An Evening of Poetry & Performance and Poets Against Genocide–and have partnered with the Getty Foundation, Academy of American Poets, and other poetry programs across the Southland.” He added, “We have welcomed writers of remarkable range and distinction, from emerging poets discovering their voices to celebrated literary figures like California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick.”

In 2025, he started the Sér Ensemble. Wartanian is a virtuoso musician and an expert in improvisation, rhythmic exploration, and conversation with instruments that come from very different musical lineages. The name “Sér” means “love” in Armenian, while the Spanish verb “ser” means “to be.” Wartanian uses the word to suggest both presence and relationship: music as something created between people rather than simply delivered to an audience.

The incoming laureate: Tina Demirdjian

Tina Demirdjian has an impressive portfolio. She has taught poetry in the Glendale, Los Angeles, and Hacienda La Puente Unified School Districts since 1991, working especially with English Language Learners from all backgrounds. Her parents didn’t speak English to her as a child, so she learned it in kindergarten. She was always labeled ‘the foreign’ kid and had to learn to assimilate. Demirdjian says, “Teaching poetry and using it to empower students is a gift for me.” Her goal is to harness their stories so that they have agency and ease over language. “Everything shapes who we are and how we approach the world,” said Demirdjian when asked about her diverse background.

She was born and raised in New Jersey in an Armenian family. Her father immigrated from Istanbul, while her mother was a first-generation Armenian born in NY whose parents came from Constantinople. She is married to a poet from El Salvador and has a grown daughter. She is multicultural and involved in many community programs. She says it was important to raise her daughter in a bi-cultural home, open to the different sounds, tastes, smells, and sights of two distinct worlds.

She owns Poetry Consults and serves as a facilitator, team builder, and event producer. With 30 years of experience in schools, museums, libraries, and companies, she believes in the power of building and sustaining partnerships. Her collaborative projects reflect her commitment to serving

the community through poetry. This includes ARTful Conversations, which lends itself to bridging the community with poetry using an art history lens at Brand Library & Art Center, and the Armenian Dress & Textile Project (ADTP)–a 25-year-old collective that organized a recent exhibit and month-long public programming of her ancestors’ clothing and embroideries from the Ottoman Empire in collaboration with Litavie Art Gallery, and supported in part by the City’s Arts & Culture Commission.

As Poet Laureate, Demirdjian will use this platform to expand her experience working with students in classrooms and teaching in museums and galleries by offering workshops for Glendale’s community at large. She will tap into the City’s diversity to address ‘the whole’ of us—where arts and culture become part and parcel of the identity of a ‘whole’ city—visualizing and drawing inspiration from the poems written and inviting businesses and institutions to become collaborative “transmitters” of these voices. Workshop participants create, and then see their work amplified in the community—valued, appreciated, honored, and celebrated through public readings and a poetry anthology. She welcomes all ages to participate and let poetry influence their lives.

Music, poetry, travel, storytelling, and overcoming the fear of writing are traits these two poet laureates share. They both want to create a platform and a safe environment for participants to share their thoughts and emotions.