By Brian Dunlap

SanTana Poets y Mas started a few minutes late. Connecting through Instagram Live. A rainy day in Southern California, during the pandemic. I was tuning into the middle of the 3rd Anniversary LibroMobile Literary Arts Festival. Local SanTana poets shared their work, beginning with Donato Martinez, a professor of English at Santa Ana College.

The Technical difficulties that followed Martinez did not take away from Sheila J. Sadr’s opening poem, having switched turns with Jenise Miller, due to connection problems. She read a powerful poem about her Iranian American family and language.

The virtual festival was created three years ago by LibroMoblie founder and author Sarah Rafael Garcia, with the intent to celebrate literary diversity through highlighting local writers of color in Santa Ana and Southern California more broadly. But this year’s Festival was not organized by Garcia alone. She was aided by LibroMobile’s social media and events coordinator, Marilynn Montaño, focusing the lineup on local and visiting artists who’ve supported the bookstore or who have raised the voices of black and native people.

Back at SanTana Poets y Mas, I had Sadr’s debut poetry collection Birthday Girl, by my side, excited to see her warm personality jump off the screen as she shared how she missed the literary community, coming together at readings and events such as this, and how much she loved everyone attending this event including the host Marilynn Montaño. The second poem Sadr read “Speak” includes the lines: “A word becomes a living room/anytime we speak the same tongue…/where Arabic and Farsi both break bread.”

Finally Montaño was able to connect with Panamanian American poet Jenise Miller, who read from her debut chapbook The Blvd, about the Compton neighborhood she grew up in. And just like Donato Martinez, Miller read a poem about mothers, this one titled “Ode to the Mommas Who Make Language Beautiful.” It read: “ode to the Mommas who take the bones of language, render it thick and full, like hips.” Before the live portion of SanTana Poets y Mas concluded.

I did not attend the rest of the LibroMobile Literary Arts Festival. But the remaining poets Tamara Hattis and Fei Hernandez, had previously recorded their words.

On a rainy Southern California day in January, during the Pandemic, this was my first experience of live streaming a literary festival. Though it didn’t go off without a hitch, I appreciated the literary community it was able to create. The powerful words I heard.