Perie Longo
Perie Longo is the newly appointed Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. She has been with California Poets in the Schools since 1984 as a poet-teacher in many area schools, teacher trainer and area coordinator of Santa Barbara County. She has also taught at the University of California Los Angeles, Antioch University Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara City College, and the Santa Barbara Music and Arts Conservatory. She has been on the literary staff of the national Santa Barbara Writers Conference for many years, leads her own three-day poetry writing workshop each summer and conducts classes in poetry writing privately.
She received her MA degree from UCLA in Speech/Communication Studies and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Sierra University with a specialization in Poetry Therapy. Also active in the National Poetry Therapy Association, she is the recent past-president and a mentor/supervisor for those seeking credentialing as a poetry therapist. In 1998 she received their “Outstanding Achievement Award” and in 2004 the “Distinguished Service Award. ”
Perie has authored three books of poetry, Milking the Earth (1986)and The Privacy of Wind (1997), both with John Daniel & Company, and most recently With Nothing behind but Sky: a journey through grief (Artamo Press, 2006). Her poems have been published or will soon appear in various journals including Nimrod, The Paterson Poetry Review, The Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Rivertalk, The South Carolina Review, Studia Mystica, Santa Barbara Magazine, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Quarterly, and several California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) anthologies. She wrote the dedication poem, carved in stone, for the Douglas Family Preserve in Santa Barbara.
You can visit Perie's website here.
