Field Notes: Poetry Inspired by Nature

2021–2023 Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Emma Trelles (Photo: Andrea Russell)

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is excited to celebrate nature through the creative lens of poetry, working in partnership with David Starkey, former poet laureate of Santa Barbara (2009–2001) and the founding director of Santa Barbara City College’s Creative Writing program.

Through this partnership, we’re thrilled to introduce Emma Trelles. As the ninth poet laureate of Santa Barbara (2021–2023), Trelles is the author of "Tropicalia" (University of Notre Dame Press), which is a winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she has received poetry fellowships from CantoMundo and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Currently, Trelles teaches at Santa Barbara City College and curates the Mission Poetry Series.

We hope you enjoy her poem about the Manzanitas (Arctostaphylos spp.), a California native plant known for its smooth, deep-red bark and small urn-shaped flowers. O

Manzanita

Of the lacquered branches, the healing leaf.

Your existence a reminder there is more

To this earth than war, wherever it is

It is everywhere.

When I close my eyes I can dream

The last of the blushed campanitas

You held on to at winter’s end, they live

Inside me now, persisting.

–Emma Trelles