Santa Barbara Poetry Series Presents a Community Celebration Presenting Two New Books of Poetry

The Santa Barbara Poetry Series will present its first reading of the 2017-18 season on Sunday, October 15, 7-8:30 pm at the Faulkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Public Library, 40 E. Anapamu Street. The evening will welcome two new books: Parable, poems by Peter Karoff, and To Give Life a Shape: Poems Inspired by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, edited by David Starkey and Chryss Yost. The event is free and open to the public.

Deb Karoff (Peter’s daughter), Perie Longo (former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate), and Ken Saxon (President of the nonprofit support group Leading from Within), will read poems from Parable and provide remembrances of Peter, who passed away earlier this year. Before his passing, Peter established an endowment that will benefit the Santa Barbara poetry community in perpetuity, supporting the Santa Barbara Poetry Series and SB Poetry.

The poems of Peter Karoff (1937-2017) have been anthologized and published in various periodicals. Parable (David Brooks Books, 2017) is his first book of poems. He wrote extensively on the moral and ethical dimensions of philanthropy and was the author of The World We Want—New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change and Just Money—A Critique of Contemporary American Philanthropy, both of which included poems.

The second half of the evening will feature readings from the poets in the anthology To Give Life a Shape. The readers will be chosen by random drawing, so it will add further excitement to the evening. Featuring over 40 poets from the Central Coast, this collection—part of the Shoreline Voices Project published by Gunpowder Press—features poems written in response to works in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

The Santa Barbara Poetry Series, coordinated by Chryss Yost and George Yatchisin and co-sponsored by Gunpowder Press and the Santa Barbara Public Library, is generously supported by Nancy Gifford. For more information see gunpowderpress.com.

Information about Santa Barbara Public Library System locations, hours, events, and programs is available at SBPLibrary.org. All Library programs are free and open to the public.