Chaucer’s Books will host former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Paul J. Willis for a reading and signing of his book “Losing Streak” 6 p..m. Wednesday, May 15 at 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

During Covid, Willis said he found himself writing light verse to cheer himself up. The resulting collection, “Losing Streak,” is composed of rhymed and metered and oddly funny (and sometimes serious) poetry that ranges in subject matter from venerable historical figures like Petrarch and Shakespeare and Milton to less venerable contemporary figures like Barbie and Mahomes and Trump.

“Losing Streak” offers readers light verse, with meter and rhyme, and clear themes carried forward. The poems are welcoming. Some are occasional and public, and many are quietly funny, in contrast to the seriousness of most poetry today.

Yet, “Losing Streak” is a serious book in its own way — because it refuses to take itself too seriously and chooses instead to honor colleagues and students and friends; and here and there are contemplative pieces of formal verse, like something old-fashioned and cherished and now lost.

Passing with ease from the world of office work to the world of nature, Willis is disillusioned with life but never gives up on it. He remarks that after a month of Covid lockdown “the most important thing / is who beat whom in Scrabble.”

Willis is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College. “Losing Streak” is his eighth poetry collection. He has also published two young adult novels, “The Alpine Tales” and “All in a Garden Green;” and two essay collections, “Bright Shoots of Everlastingness” and “To Build a Trail.”

Each January, Willis hosts an outdoor community reading of the work of former national poet laureate William Stafford on the site of Los Prietos Civilian Public Service camp in Los Padres National Forest, where Stafford served as a conscientious objector during World War II.