Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry

Back by popular demand, the reading series “Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry” will offer its second event of 2025 on Tuesday, October 7 at The Good Lion, 1212 State Street, Santa Barbara. There will be a poetic happy hour from 4:30 – 5:30 pm followed by the poetry reading itself from 5:30 – 6:30 pm. The evening, which has free admission (and a no-host bar), is open to the public. The series—which began in 2015—has become so popular, filling The Good Lion with lovers of poetry and cocktails, that a second edition for the year seemed necessary.

“When Brando Ristaino and Misty Orman, owners of the Good Lion, offered us the opportunity to hold a second event in October, we jumped at it,” says George Yatchisin, reading ringleader. “How marvelously macabre it should be, getting to write about not just alcoholic spirits but also spooky ones for the Halloween season. And as a lunar bonus, it’s the evening of a Super Moon.”

A group of invited poets will read their work, and the work of others, about libations of all sorts. The reading will be hosted by Santa Barbara Poet Laureate George Yatchisin, who is also “Drinkable Landscape” columnist for Edible Santa Barbara, food writer for the Santa Barbara Independent, and author of poetry volumes Feast Days and The First Night We Thought the World Would End.

Featured readers will include Mary Brown, Michelle Detorie, Krista Harris, Rebecca Horrigan, Simon Kiefer, Robert Krut, Amy Michelson, David Starkey, Emma Trelles, and Chryss Yost.