Since April 2014, local resident Elsa Frausto has served as Sunland-Tujunga’s poet laureate – a post that she considers the crowning point of her decades of writing and publishing career.
“The Poet Laureate program was established to honor and continue the legacy of John Steven McGroarty, a man of his time. Aspirations change but at the center is the love one feels for the place called home,” Frausto said. “In our case, this love became poetry. In my case, because I am an immigrant, poetry is a voice made up of many sounds and images that found a home in these foothills after a 30- year journey. I am part of the growing diversity in our community and celebrate it in writing – in my first language, Spanish, and in English, the one that opened the poetry world to me when I was a teenager in Canada. Poetry does not set out to bridge gaps but, because of its very nature, it is inclusive and celebratory.”
During her term of service, Frausto has promoted the literary arts by appearing at dozens of readings and establishing the Wide Open Reading series at the Sunland-Tujunga Branch Library.
“During these three years, it has been a delight to meet with local poets at Sunland Park to create Poetry Under the Pines, to acknowledge not only poetry but music and narrative as well at the Wide Open Readings held monthly at the library and to showcase the Poem of the Month at the Friends’ bookstore,” she said. “Through local institutions like Little Landers of Bolton Hall, my involvement in collaborative work with the Village Poets and our monthly readings, volunteering at the Friends of the Library bookstore, I have come to learn and appreciate more than ever before the distinctness of life in our foothills and its history. Waking up each morning to these mountains and the sun making its way from the east, going to sleep with the moon in an open sky and the howling of coyotes in the near distance, I would not change for anything.”
The committee entrusted to select Frausto’s successor is currently reviewing applications for the next poet laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. A gala celebration known as the “Passing of the Laurels” is scheduled for 3 p.m. on April 23 at the McGroarty Arts Center where Frausto will present her final reading as poet laureate and pass the symbolic laurels to the next gifted writer who will expand and promote the program in their own unique way as each of the prior eight laureates have done since 1999.
For more information about Sunland-Tujunga’s poet laureate program, visit www.villagepoets.com and www.villagepoets.blogspot.com.

Submitted by Joe DeCENZO