Poet Starkey Holds Reading, Booksigning

Santa Barbara Poet Laureate David Starkey will read his poetry at a booksigning event Thursday, Feb. 25, at 3:30 p.m. in Westmont’s Hieronymus Lounge inside Kerrwood Hall. Starkey, director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, is the current poet laureate of the City of Santa Barbara. The reading is free and open to the public.

Starkey has written many poetry collections, including “Starkey’s Book of States” (Boson Books, 2007), “Adventures of the Minor Poet” (Artamo Press, 2007), and “Ways of Being Dead: New and Selected Poems” (Artamo Press, 2006). “A Few Things You Should Know about the Weasel” will be published by the Canadian press Biblioasis later this year.

Starkey is familiar to many as the host of Santa Barbara Channels television program “The Creative Community,” which features interviews of local and visiting writers and artists.

Over the past 20 years, Starkey’s poems have appeared in such journals as The American Scholar, Notre Dame Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and The Southern Review.

With Westmont professor Paul Willis, he co-edited “In A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare” (University of Iowa Press, 2005). He has also written two textbooks: “Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief” (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008) and “Poetry Writing: Theme and Variations” (McGraw-Hill, 1999).