Poetry Connection | Get to Know Santa Barbara’s Next Poet Laureate

Ten Questions with George Yatchisin, Santa Barbara’s Next Poet Laureate

George Yatchisin and Archie | Photo: Courtesy

Melinda Palacio wears her title proudly | Photo: Courtesy

There’s a lot going on in the poetry community right now. My Santa Barbara Independent colleague, George Yatchisin, will become Santa Barbara’s next Poet Laureate. I will be passing the laurels onto him on April 22 at City Hall. Before George’s inauguration, National Poetry Month in Santa Barbara will kick off with George’s 11th Annual Spirits in the Air event, celebrating potent poems (read more about it here). Also, Poetry in Parks, my collaboration with State Parks, will be even bigger this year with music and flamenco dancing on April 12 at the Alhecama Theatre, behind Playa Azul restaurant.

See the events list for more Poetry Month activities.

A poet’s job never ends. I will still be coming to your events, schools, auditoriums, and parks (anywhere I am invited) to share my poetry and music. I will also continue to write this column. Today, you can read about Santa Barbara Poet Laureate–elect George Yatchisin. I asked him 10 questions and he promptly replied.

How does it feel to be Poet Laureate–elect of Santa Barbara?

I am excited, humbled, and honored. The previous 10 Poets Laureate have built such a robust program that to be invited to continue in their tradition is a privilege I do not take lightly. Especially given at this moment the world seems to devalue the power and precision of language. There’s a lot of work to do.

What are some of your goals and projects for your tenure as Poet Laureate?

I hope to visit all 21 schools in the Santa Barbara Unified School District. We need to grow poets from an early age! I also hope to put out a call for an anthology that I’ll edit and Gunpowder’s Shoreline Voices will publish about Santa Barbara food and drink.

The power poets: George Yatchisin and Chryss Yost | Photo: Courtesy

You are married to a Poet Laureate, Chryss Yost. How were you inspired by your wife to become a Poet Laureate? Was that a factor in your decision to apply?

As anyone who knows her can attest, there’s no one more hardworking, accomplished, and inspirational than my wife, Chryss Yost. If I’m half the Poet Laureate she was and has been as an emerita, I’ll have felt I’ve succeeded.

Some readers know you for your food articles and some for your poetry. Are the two connected for you, or are they two completely different interests?

All my writing starts with a love of language. Then it spreads to everything else I love, and I love food and drink. Plus, so much of the diction in that area is fascinating and/or gorgeous. Rutabaga — now that’s a word. Who doesn’t want to figure out how to work it into a line or a sentence?

Who are some of your favorite poets and do you have a favorite poem that you keep in your pocket or recite at special occasions?

So many favorite poets, so any time I do one of these lists, I feel bad about the other five or 50 I forget to name. That said, this Jack Gilbert poem has long been one of my favorites, particularly for its concision:

In Dispraise of Poetry

by Jack Gilbert

When the King of Siam disliked a courtier,
he gave him a beautiful white elephant.
The miracle beast deserved such ritual
that to care for him properly meant ruin.

Yet to care for him improperly was worse.
It appears the gift could not be refused.

When did you first know you wanted to be a poet?

I’ve been writing all kinds of things since I was a kid. I don’t remember not writing and reading.

You are originally from outside of California. What brought you to Santa Barbara?

The good fortune of a job as a lecturer in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara. And once I got here in 1994, I made sure I did everything I could to stay for good.

Do you have a favorite place in Santa Barbara?

My own backyard. We get lots of stars on Santa Barbara’s Westside. We have lots of native plantings, so during the day, the yard is abuzz with birds and bugs. And a neighbor’s yard features a pine tree that’s at least 80 feet tall. It’s an ecosystem all on its own. And when the owls hang out in it, it’s truly magical.

You host one of the first events of National Poetry Month in Santa Barbara (the aforementioned Spirits in the Air). Will this year’s event feel different now that you have been chosen as the city’s next Poet Laureate?

I guess I won’t know until I get there and start talking. Luckily, I will be having a cocktail — the event takes place at The Good Lion and all the poems are about drinking in some way.

Anything else you’d like to tell readers of the Independent? Will you be writing more about poetry than other subjects you typically cover?

I guess that’s up to our editor Leslie Dinaberg? Oddly, even in the book reviews I do, which first appear in the California Review of Books and then get republished in the Indy, I tend to write more about nonfiction with a novel or two sprinkled in, than about poetry.

Even on a Marine Layer Day

by George Yatchisin

One of our nasturtium
out its heart bleeds
an even brighter orange
you have to get close to
to be sure it’s not shadow,
some glory you just hope
to glimpse, inadvertently
revising the world. So
when you realize it’s real,
gorgeous and mindless
and without a need for you,
you remember it’s just
a showoff weed, a re-seeder
with the good sense
to be indiscriminate.

From the anthology While You Wait, published by Gunpowder Press.

George Yatchisin is the author of Feast Days (Flutter Press, 2016) and The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press, 2019). His poems have been published in journals including Antioch Review, Askew, and Zocalo Public Square. He is co-editor of the anthology Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art (Gunpowder Press, 2015), and his poetry appears in anthologies including Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman’s Library, 2019).

Poetry Month Events:

April 2: Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry reading, The Good Lion, 4:30-6:30 p.m., 1212 State Street.

April 2: SBCC welcomes the first Latino U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Poetry Workshop, 10-11 a.m.; Reception at the Garvin Theatre, 5:30-6 p.m.; Poetry Reading, 6-7 p.m.; book signing, 7-8 p.m.

April 3: Impromptu Typewriter On-Demand Poetry, First Thursday in front of Old Navy on State Street, 5-8 p.m.

Poetry in the Parks takes place on April 12 at the Alhecama Theater | Photo: Courtesy

April 5: Celebrating Latino Poetry Reading with Blas Falconer and Emma Trelles, Santa Barbara Faulkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Public Library, 3-4:30 p.m.

April 12: Poetry in Parks, featuring California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick. Melinda Palacio and State Parks host an afternoon of poetry, music by Mark Zolezzi, and dance by Rosal Ortega Flamenco. Poets include Perie Longo, Emma Trelles, Ruben Lee Dalton, Lori Anaya, Takunda Chickowero, and Scott Green. Also, the return of the Lit Bot, take home a poem. 1-4 p.m. at the Alhecama Theater (215-A E. Canon Perdido St., El Presidio de Santa Bárbara).

April 13: Poetry Zone, monthly reading and open mic, featured readers: The Inner Three, Don Kingfisher Campbell, Marvinlouis Dorsey, and Calokie, 1:30-3:30 p.m., Karpeles Manuscript Library (21 W. Anapamu St).

April 14: Lowstate Salon, Felicity Landa facilitates a writing opportunity, 7-9 p.m., Casa Agria (418 State St).

April 26: Santa Ynez Valley Poetry Group at the Elverhøj Museum in Solvang, poetry reading at 4 p.m.

April 29: Impromptu Typewriter Poetry, 5-7 p.m. at Chaucer’s Books, also features poet Sharon Frances from Oxnard and her new book.