“Though the drought continues through the winter, there is no drought of winter poetry,” writes organizer Paul Willis. The public is warmly invited to attend the winter reading of the Santa Barbara Poetry Series at 7 p.m. on Saturday, February 21 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (653 Paseo Nuevo, Upper Arts Terrace).

The three presenting poets are Katie Shara, Jackson Wheeler and Zack Rogow.

Younger poet Katie Shara was born and raised in Santa Barbara and is a recent graduate of Westmont College.  She became interested in poetry while on a semester abroad in Orvieto, Italy.  She is currently working at a local preschool—teaching two-year-olds, writing curriculum, and settling into post-grad life.

Local poet and social worker Jackson Wheeler was born and raised on the eastern slopes of the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.  He is the author of two collections of poetry, Swimming Past Iceland (Millie Grazie Press, 1993) and A Near Country (SOLO Press, 1999), and also of a forthcoming collection, Was I Asleep: Poems 1980-2014.  Since 1989, he has hosted the Arcade Poetry Series, now part of the cultural offerings of the Oxnard Carnegie Art Museum.

Visiting poet Zack Rogow was born and raised in New York City and now lives in San Francisco. His poems have appeared in a variety of magazines, from American Poetry Review to Zyzzyva, and he is the author, editor, or translator of nineteen books or plays, including his seventh book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers (Kattywompus Press, 2012), and an anthology of U.S. poetry, The Face of Poetry (University of California Press, 2005).  Currently he teaches in the low-residency MFA at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

The event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for students.

—Leslie Dinaberg

Originally published in Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine on February 13, 2015.