Chaucer’s celebrates Poetry Month with readings by four local poets — Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Rich Ferguson, Kathleen Florence and Melinda Palacio — at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 9 at 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.
Hammer’s “City Slicker – encounters with the outside” is a mini-collection of city/country poems in mostly free verse.
Hammer runs in and out of sprinklers in a Manhattan playground; picks up a slug by accident in the Cascades; reads about sequoia on 5th avenue; makes an uncomfortable journey to the Hôpital américain in Paris; strolls a surprisingly sensual Geneva Switzerland at 2 a.m., encounters a mountain lion in Anaheim Hills, and attempts to make peace with living in rural Washington State, with the spiritual assistance of Eva Gabor.
Hammer is an award winning poet, novelist, and essayist with published work in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Chiron Review, SALT, Spillway, and The RavensPerch.
Her new chapbook of lyric, magical realist flash fiction, “The Warbler School Chronicles” is out with Bamboo Dart Press. A professor emerita of comparative literature at UC Riverside, Stephanie lives in Santa Barbara. Learn more at http://stephaniebarbehammer.com.
Ferguson’s “Somewhere, a Playground” is a bold and lyrical meditation on grief and survival in modern America, Chaucer’s said.
In a landscape scarred by violence and broken promises, the collection turns wounds into song and uplifts voices of resilience, defiance and hope.
A Pushcart-nominated poet, Ferguson has shared the stage with artists Patti Smith and Wanda Coleman. He is the author of the poetry collections “8th& Agony” and “Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates,” “Somewhere, a Playground,” and the novel “New Jersey Me.”
Ferguson is the lead editor of an anthology of California poets titled “Beat Not Beat.” Synopsis and biography courtesy of the author.
Florence’s “Prayers With a Side of Cash” follows a filmmaker’s journey from New York to Los Angeles, reframing the classic American road trip with a series of poems that witness a country in flux.
The collection asks what it means to travel not only through space but through the shifting stories that shape us. Part personal pilgrimage and part exploration of American identity, the poems are accompanied by a soundtrack that dares to believe there is hope to be found in the sweetness of life.
Florence is a Canadian-born poet, performer, and visual artist whose work moves between page, stage and screen.
Her debut collection “Prayers With a Side of Cash” was born from a 2024 road trip across America, an odyssey of landscapes, music, and shifting stories. Before moving to Los Angeles, she performed widely in New York, Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Learn more about her at www.kathleenflorencepoet.com.
Palacio’s poetry collection “How Fire Is a Story, Waiting” creates images that are at once heartbreaking and humorous. She tackles elemental subjects of family and childhood with the same depth and grace as that of myth making and death.
As the only child of a mother who died too young, Palacio infuses her words with longing and life, and celebrates the women who came before her. Each poem offers up the truth in a fearless and unsentimental voice.
Palacio’s lyrical language punctuates an unexpected pause to subjects such as domestic violence and her childhood in South Central Los Angeles.
“How Fire Is A Story, Waiting” is divided into four sections: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. In each section Palacio tempers heartbreak, violence, and disappointment with the antidote of humor, beauty, and an appreciation for life.
Palacio is Santa Barbara’s 10th poet laureate. Author of “Ocotillo Dreams,” her poetry collection, “How Fire Is a Story, Waiting,” won first prize at the 2013 International Latino Book Awards. In 2015, her work was featured by the Academy of American Poets. Her latest book is Bird Forgiveness. Synopsis and biography courtesy of the author.
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