Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Program

Santa Barbara Public Library is home of Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate. By partnering with the Poet Laureate and Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture, SBPL is able to offer a wide array of free poetry readings, writing workshops, and related events to Santa Barbara’s thriving poetry community. SBPL also collaborates with organizations and members of the local literary community committed to creating free programming that makes poetry and other literature more accessible to readers and writers of all ages.

Just a few of the library’s ongoing and past partnered poetry and literary programs:

Local Author Day
Santa Barbara Poetry Series
Tuesday Poets at the Library
Mission Poetry Series
“Guess Who’s in Town Reading”
Big Enough for Words
Poetry Walks
PlayFest

Santa Barbara’s current Poet Laureate - George Yatchisin (2025-2027)

Where Prospect Met Crescent

If my parents were in love it was because the country let them be, asking for families to mushroom suburbia all over the northeast. The busy post-war manufacture of weapons systems bloomed the likes of Curtiss-Wright, calling even self-taught engineers like my dad to help slide-rule an atomic stalemate future.

Mom’s job was to hold down the home front, raise us kids until we were old enough for Catholic school to take us, figure out the best ways to shake and bake dinners ovened in bags. We required enemies to keep us whole – Communists with their missiles pointed at us from Cuba, Kennedys killing girls by driving them into the drink, sins which were everywhere like abortionists and Democrats. Death is pagan as fuck.

How could anything based on so much distrust not become untenable, no matter how innocent the pre-teens seemed dancing about a maypole at the Church of the Nativity, just a twirl of immaculate white dresses.

To read more about Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate program and see a list of past poets laureate visit the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture.