The Idyllwild Poetry Society, a new organization “formed with the purpose of promoting poetry and the literary arts in the Idyllwild community,” will hold its first event this weekend at the new Recht Gallery. The event will include readings by three poets: Annalise Oatmen, Anthony Q Mack and Eszter Takács. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with the featured poets and an open mic for audience members. Admission is suggested donations, with tickets available for food and drink.

“We’re thrilled to be launching the Idyllwild Poetry Society and can’t wait to share the work of these incredible poets with our community,” said Hector Cardenas, founder of the society. “Our goal is to provide a platform for local poets to share their work and connect with other writers, while also bringing in poets from outside the area to showcase their talents.” The Idyllwild Poetry Society is a child organization of Cardenas’ Idyllwild Creative Arts, which seeks to promote the arts in general in the Idyllwild area.

Cardenas is one of those energetic young folk bristling with ideas and the energy to put them into action. His earlier efforts here in Idyllwild include open mics at the Rustic Theatre. The Crier sat down with Cardenas to get a bit of his story.

TC: How did you first come to Idyllwild?

HC: When I was 18, I wanted to do my first “adult” vacation. I looked at the mountains in California, for a cabin. Idyllwild was the closest and cheapest. A cabin with a hot tub, in Pine Cove, or a little past, in Stonewood. We had the beautiful view of the city and the mountains and the snow from the hot tub. I started visiting for the film festival, then started coming once a month. During COVID my landlord sold the house where I was renting; we had to find another place to live. The choices were Moreno Valley or coming up here. If I had chosen MV I would have continued painting houses. Up here I got into songwriting. I decided to continue my artistic pursuits … with Brett Perkins. He does a songwriting retreat at Spirit Mountain, like once a quarter.

TC: And where does poetry come in?

HC: I have stuff published in the [Mountain San Jacinto College] newspaper. I’ve been writing poetry for a long time. I wanted to make literature one of the main focuses of Idyllwild Creative Arts. I have a goal in mind, a music festival. I thought poetry would be a good way to get things started

TC: You did musical open mics at the Rustic. Anything like that coming up?

HC: I think a country music night coming up Merkaba, a St. Patty’s Day potluck and then the country music the night after.

TC: What goals do you have for the group?

HC: Put on more events; also start doing workshops for poetry. I feel like poetry is very impactful. I think people take poetry for granted. I think it can inspire people. Maybe go to regional events as a group. Everyone who writes a poem, they show their metaphysical beliefs. Not in a religious sense but in a philosophical sense; how they perceive the world influences how they will write their poems, their style. You know the Aztecs, their philosophy was in poetry.

TC: Their philosophy rhymed?

HC: It wasn’t about rhyming. They were trying to get across that reality isn’t that simple. I can’t talk on behalf of the Aztecs, but that reality is more abstract than most people think.

TC: Do you think poetry reading is like serious standup comedy?

HC: Standup is about laughter and narrative; poetry is more a vulnerability you are displaying.

Cardenas also wanted to extend his gratitude to Taylor Bechtel, the owner of Recht Gallery, “for letting me have the event, that he is a part of the Idyllwild Poetry Society and that everything worked out this way, him helping with the event, the design of our logo.”

The poet Oatmen’s Elephantjournal.com website profile describes her as “a writer (of nonfiction that reads like weird fiction and of poems that read like prayers of power to the artist inside each of us). She is also a licensed psychotherapist expanding her therapy practice into non-new age-y spiritual and clinically informed offerings and services catering to those on the creator path in her new business, Rebel Creatrix.”

Mack is a Hemet resident whose book of poetry, “Cries from the Heart,” was once available on Amazon. Cardenas tells us there are three volumes of this, and that they met while he was installing cable. “I used to do cable for Spectrum and I was doing cable at his house. We were talking. I asked him what he does for a living. ‘I’m a writer; my focus is in poetry.’ He had retired from working, teaching medical assistants or something. I told him we’re doing open mics up in Idyllwild.”

Takács is a member of the Humanities faculty at the Idyllwild Arts Academy (IAA) and has a long list of accomplishments as a writer, educator and advocate. Her website, esztereszter.com, reports that she is currently in the dissertation phase of her PhD program (University of Denver) and so is a doctoral candidate of contemporary poetics. “My writing and research focuses on the poetics of the body and the poetics of power and celebrity.” Her dissertation “serves to examine the space occupied by American icon Britney Spears as both product and victim of capitalism. Through poetry, Eszter is working to codify the textual artifacts of Britney’s captivity narrative into a revision history where the heroine prevails.” The fondness for found objects and text (and cats) also informs her forays into visual arts.

Her teaching has included stints at Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, University of Denver and University of Arkansas. Her poetry has appeared in many publications and two “chap books.” Originally from Hungary, she has “endeavored to translate” several poets from her native language. Takács answered a few questions for the Crier this week.

TC: Do you know what you will read that night?

ET: Probably some older poems from my first two chapbooks, “The Spectacular Crash” and “Together We Will Talk Right Down to Earth,” and perhaps some of my “Britney” poems from my unfinished doctoral dissertation. Teaching at IAA has been intense this first year. I haven’t really found the time and bandwidth to write.

TC: You have a wide engagement with art; images and words. How does poetry fit in, what special “itch” does it scratch?

ET: While still an active doctoral student at the University of Denver, I took an incredible course called Divinatory Poetics with Selah Saterstrom. This was a seminar and workshop hybrid course, and Selah, in addition to being a prolific and brilliant writer, is professionally involved with tarot, witchery and the divine. A lot of the prompts she provided for us involved weird art and garbage experiments and the processes of chemical decay as poetic investigation. Within the time-space of this seminar and workshop, I started fabricating small artworks out of scraps and garbage, and letting those artworks inspire my writing through Selah’s divinatory practices. It was wild. But also, I just like to make art away from the pressures of being a writer in the doctoral/professional sense. I’ve sold a few pieces of my art before.

TC: Hector, when I compared poetry reading to stand-up comedy, mentioned vulnerability as something essential to poetry. How would you describe the difference?

ET: Vulnerability, yes, but poetry can be funny. The new generation of surrealist poets, those in the space of the new sincerity, love soft-core irony. That being said, for me, poetry is power but also; a good poem has to be a little bit sad.

TC: Are there other “performance arts” you have done?

ET: I used to go to a lot of readings and poetry open-mic nights in Arkansas and Colorado. The Open Mouth reading series in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is a poetry space I miss on the daily. I also read my work at a few readings at various [Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP)] until after AWP 2015 in Minneapolis, after which I swore off the festival [because] I realized poets are insane, petty and terrifying, especially when they all get together for a pissing contest and drink way too much.

Recht Gallery is at 54240 Ridgeview Drive, in the Courtyard building. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the event will begin at 7 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 18. Admission is free with donations welcome. For more information, contact Hector Cardenas at Idyllwildpoetry@gmail.com or follow the society on Instagram @IdyllwildPoetrySociety.