Probably the first thing most people notice about Santa Barbara’s new poet laureate, Enid Osborn, is her smile. It’s shy but friendly and, like everything about Osborn, seems to come from someplace centered and genuine. Her voice, too, is an instrument of welcome. Although she has lived in Santa Barbara for nearly 30 years, Osborn was born and raised in New Mexico, and she still retains more than a trace of a warm Southwestern drawl.
Osborn’s sincerity and good cheer were very much on display on April 11, when the Santa Barbara City Council approved and installed her as the city’s seventh poet laureate, a position she will hold until April 2019. A homemade garland crowning her long silver hair, she read her installation poem, “Call Me Poet,” to a standing-room-only crowd of onlookers, some of whom had come from Ventura and San Luis Obispo to wish her well.
In a city with so many bards, the competition to be the next laureate is always formidable. However, among poets, the choice of Osborn was not surprising — she is, after all, famous for attending just about every public reading in town — and according to the County Office of Arts & Culture, she “received numerous nominations from a diverse group of educational institutions, poets, and local organizations.”