Chaucer’s Books will host local poets Enid Osborn and Daniel Thomas for a reading of their latest works, 6 p.m. Monday Feb. 9 at the bookstore, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

Osborn is the author of “Pedregosa St.” She lived there from 1997-2025 in a two-story Italianate Victorian house built circa 1902 on Santa Barbara’s Westside. The house was on a cul-de-sac abutting the railroad and freeway.

“Blending autobiography, magic realism and fiction, Osborn paints a picture of a charmed-if-spartan life,” Chaucer’s said.

The poems focus mainly on the early years of Osborn’s tenancy, when the house stood amid a crumbling neighborhood in gang territory — an area that was gentrified in later years.

Subthemes of the poems include trains, insomnia, ghosts, rats, birds, colorful neighbors, surviving cancer, and living long enough in one place to play a bit role in its metamorphosis.

Osborn is a 45-year resident of Santa Barbara. She served as the city’s poet laureate in 2017-19.

“Pedregosa St.” (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2025), Osborn’s second full-length book of poetry, will be receive a launch at Chaucer’s Books in February.

Her first book, titled “When the Big Wind Comes” (Big Yes Press, 2015), describes her childhood in southeast New Mexico, where her family raised quarter horses.

Osborn’s work appears mainly in West Coast and Southwest journals and anthologies. Her poem “The Place of Loss” was nominated by Askew for a Pushcart Prize.

She co-edited “A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens,” featuring the work of 81 poets, living and bygone (Green Poet Press 2011.)

For more, visit www.enidosbornpoet.com.

Thomas’ “River of Light” begins in the gathering headwaters of grief and blessing, then floats through the confluence and flow of Eastern spiritual practices.

At its delta, it enters the sea with poems about light and death and speculation on the afterlife.

The title poem takes its inspiration from Canto 30 of Dante’s Paradiso and Monet’s dictum that “the real subject of every painting is light.”

Thomas’ third poetry collection “River of Light” is just out from Shanti Arts Publishing. His previous books are “Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn” and “Deep Pockets.”

He has published poems in numerous journals, including Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, Poetry Ireland Review, Amethyst Review, Vita Poetica, Radix, and Atlanta Review.

Find more at danielthomaspoetry.com.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 
 
 
 




 
 
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
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