The Goleta Valley Library invites local poets to join the featured readers at our first semi-annual Live Poetry Series, hosted by former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate David Starkey. Our first reading will feature former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Chryss Yost and local poet George Yatchisin, along with two other local poets, one of each selected from submissions to the Under Eighteen and Over Eighteen categories.
 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

• Submissions must be emailed to goletavalleylibrary@cityofgoleta.org by November 19th, 2022. Please use "Poetry Submission" in the subject line.
• Poems should be copied/pasted into the body of the submission email.
• Readers may submit three poems, each up to two pages in length.
• All poems must be the original work of the submitter.
• Readers should include their full name and telephone number, and indicate whether they are submitting to the Under 18 category or Over 18 category.
• David Starkey, the reading series host, will choose two submissions, one from each category.
   

Chryss Yost is a poet, designer, and educator based in Santa Barbara, California. She is the co-editor of Gunpowder Press, an independent poetry publisher, and principal of Sungold Editions. She served as Santa Barbara Poet Laureate from 2013-2015. She was awarded the Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize from Carlow University (selected by Patricia Smith) and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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).

David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. He is Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College and the Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past thirty years, he has published ten full-length collections of poetry with small presses and more than 500 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner and Southern Review.