David Starkey (poet)

Starkey is a professor of English at Santa Barbara City College, where he directs the creative writing program.

He served as Santa Barbara's third poet laureate, from 2009-2011,[1] has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac,[2] and is the publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press, a Santa Barbara-based small press that specializes in the publication of poetry.

[3] Writing in The Georgia Review, Paul Zimmer praised Starkey’s “wonderful language” and “amazing lines,” concluding, “Starkey is an entertaining and resourceful poet.”[4] Of Like a Soprano, Starkey's poetry collection based on The Sopranos TV series, cast member Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti, called the “episode by episode distillation of the series…potent, loving and inspired.”[5] Critic Arthur Kayzakian noted in Poetry International that the book “never misses a dark heartbeat” allowing the reader “to delve deeper into the psyche of Tony Soprano.”[6] Reviewing Living Blue in the Red States, an anthology of essays exploring the divide between the red states and blue states, Andy Fogle wrote in PopMatters that the book “reveals the sensitivity, openness, and respect which the best (blue or red) minds can offer.

I think that there are at least a couple of essays that strident Republicans would appreciate and, perhaps more importantly, those same essays might teach some Democrats a thing or two about temperance and true tolerance.”[7] Booklist noted that Living Blue in the Red States contributors display “passion for their regions and elegance in expressing their anger, frustration, and longing to close—or at least understand—the political divide.”[8] Perhaps best known for his popular textbook Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief,[9] Starkey's pedagogy is based on collaborations with the late Wendy Bishop, which focused on employing composition studies to aid in the teaching of creative writing.

In an article in College Composition and Communication entitled “The Place of Composition in Creative Writing Studies,” Doug Hesse identifies Starkey as a writer-teacher working “at the fringe of both fields—perhaps tolerantly or even compellingly so.”[10]