Poetry Connection | Connecting the Dots

Last week, I taught a poetry workshop on how to write an ode. The program was in partnership with the Santa Barbara Public Library, whose Santa Barbara Reads Selection for this year is Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal to the Sea. The book begins each chapter with a verse fragment by noted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the poet himself is also a fictional character in the historical novel. In the workshop, I had the students read Neruda’s odes in both English and Spanish. Poet and attendee Toni Lorien said she appreciated seeing and hearing the poems in their original Spanish, even though she does not speak the language. 

An ode is a poem that offers praise and often, but not always, begins with the word, “Oh,” such as in Neruda’s “Ode to a Lament,” which begins: “Oh child among the roses.” While it is often used, the little word “Oh” is not necessary. Here’s an example from our previous poet laureate Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and her poem “An Ode to the King Palm.”

Students wrote drafts of their odes and shared them with the class. It was an impressive and varied group, from writers to people wanting to use poetry as self-care (a fabulous idea by the way). I’m looking forward to reading their finished odes, which will be displayed in an upcoming Poetry Walk, thanks to Emma Trelles (Santa Barbara’s ninth Poet Laureate, you might recall her profile in the Independent). She collaborated with the library and sponsored the workshop with a grant she received from the Academy of American Poets to bring free programming to the community. After the students turn in their odes, the library will schedule a Poetry Walk.

The library started doing Poetry Walks in tandem with the NEA Big Read 2021 and the Book to Action 2022 program. It’s where poems from the community are printed on large, free-standing posters and then are displayed at various locations around town for everyone to read. For the 2021 Big Read, the community wrote poems in response to Joy Harjo’s An American Sunrise. The next poetry walk was connected to Island Visions, a book that celebrates the complex and vibrant ecologies of the Channel Islands. Trelles served on the selection committee for both projects and was impressed by the level of their community engagement. She says the fellowship she received helped her continue and support more poetry walks. “My favorite part is seeing community poets standing next to their poems, reading them out loud or posing for pictures with their friends and family,” she said. “There’s a real joy there and it’s amazing to have played a small part in creating that.”

It still surprises me that people are unfamiliar with Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate Program. However, I’m glad that more folks are attending in person poetry events. Trelles’s next project is the Mission Poetry Series’ fall reading on Saturday, November 4, at the Faulkner Gallery at the Central Library downtown at 1 p.m. The program will feature the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Lynne Thompson; Santa Barbara–based poet and musician Julian Talamantez Brolaski; and Jalisco-born California poet Gustavo Hernandez. In its 15th season, Trelles is proud to continue to bring multicultural and diverse poets to Santa Barbara.

While we wait for students of the workshop to finish their odes and for the upcoming Poetry Walk, enjoy an ode from Emma Trelles. She wrote this ode earlier this year in honor of her grandmother and her secret recipe for carne fría: “She’s been gone for many years now and I think about her all the time and am grateful to be able to remember her through poetry.”

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Carne Fría: A Love Story 

by Emma Trelles ( this poem first appeared in Gravy Journal, Summer 2023 Issue) 

Her strip of a kitchen the surface 

Of the sun when she cooked in the eternal 

Summer of our city of reinvention. Miami 

Still shunned us then, if you can imagine 

A place without the persistent glint of Spanish 

And the way café levitates every rough juncture. 

She never spoke English and what she might have 

Understood about that time was buried beneath her 

Eyes, alive even now in a hand-painted photograph  

Where I keep her near my own little stove.  

I never saw my grandmother make it,  

The meat arrived silvered and flecked 

With olives and the knowledge of a woman 

Of obsidian will, who survived by refusing not to. 

There are years since when she still visits me 

Circled in blue flame, and she looks 

Pleased with her unseen arrangement, 

A home where she knows every tongue. 

I ask her about my uncle Tito, if he is there  

With his books about astral projection and his chess board,  

If the place she now lives has the same island light of where  

She was born and where she died. She shines and says nothing. She always preferred to listen, her face open to me, soft 

As gardenias she cut from the yard and set in a cup of water 

Beside my bed. I ask her what the recipe was  

For her carne fría, if I will again taste  

It cold and wondrous salt. To this, she lifts

Her hand and presses it to my heart.

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Upcoming Events:

October 21: 71st Annual Breakfast with the Authors, 9:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m., SBCEO Auditorium, 4400 Cathedral Oaks Rd. Adults: $20, Students: $16. Register here.

October 22: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St. Día de los Muertos free family day. Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Melinda Palacio will perform three sets of music and poetry honoring her ancestors and loved ones during the following times: 1:15-1:35 p.m., 2:15-2:35 p.m., and 3:15-3:35 p.m. Free.

November 4: Mission Poetry Series, Central Library Faulkner Gallery, 40 E. Anapamu St. 1pm. Free.