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NEW BOOK
With Nothing Behind
But Sky
a journey through grief

CD: Perie Longo
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Perie Longo was appointed the new Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara for 2007-09.

Perie’s life is helping others to find their voices, whether in her role as a marriage, family and child therapist, a poet, a poet teacher through California-Poets-in-the-Schools (CPITS), or poet working in the therapeutic mode. She is the recent past-president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) which promotes growth and healing through literature, symbol and story. She is a Mentor/supervisor for those who seek credentialing either as a certified poetry therapist (CPT) or a registered poetry therapist (PTR). Individual training plans are designed as well as training with peers in the local area. In 1998 she was presented their “Outstanding Achievement Award ” and in 2004 the “Distinguished Service Award.” She is a MFT in private practice who also conducts writing groups specifically for healing. For twenty-one years she has led poetry workshops for the national Santa Barbara Writers Conference, held the third week in June. Every August she leads the three day Santa Barbara Summer Poetry Writing Workshop.

Perie is also chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Poetry committee. Each year the Foundation sponsors the Barbara Mandigo Kelly poetry awards offering prizeson the subject of peace and the human spirit in three categories: adult, high school and youth. See their website Waging Peace.Org.

Perie has published three books of poems; Milking the Earth (1986), and The Privacy of Wind (1997), and most recently With Nothing behind but Sky: a journey through grief (Artamo Press, 2006). Her poems have been, or will soon be published in, many literary journals including The Paterson Review, The Prairie Schooner, California State Poetry Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Rattle, Rivertalk, South Carolina Review, Santa Barbara Magazine, Solo, Studia Mystica, The Lucid Stone, The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Quarterly and several California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) anthologies, of which she has edited two volumes. Recently she wrote a dedication poem, carved in stone, for the Douglas Family Preserve in Santa Barbara.

She teaches psychology and poetry therapy at Antioch, Santa Barbara as well as having taught at the University of California Los Angeles, Santa Barbara City College, and has been a frequent guest lecturer in the UCSB English Department. Her adult students have worked with Perie many years and publish widely. Perie runs poetry therapy groups at Sanctuary Psychiatric Centers, Hospice of Santa Barbara, and New Seasons Behavioral Health Systems in Pt. Hueneme, Ca.

Please feel free to contact Perie if you are interested in receiving individual therapy, learning more about NAPT, exploring the emotional content of your poems or wish help in crafting your work. She says poetry as art and poetry as therapy are very separate in their approach, however all poetry reading and writing is therapeutic. She echoes the poet Shelley who said “poets are the true legislators of the world.” In today’s troubled world, poetry more than ever is a way to at least bring us to internal peace.


Perie Longo, Ph.D., MFT, PTR

Registered Poetry Therapist

800 Garden St. Suite I
Santa Barbara, CA 93101

(805) 687-1619

E-Mail [email protected]