An Essay That Took Me More Than Thirty Years to Write Has Been Published! Apr 11, 2022 my work & 2022 I am very excited that an essay it took me nearly thirty years to write, “The First Time I Told Someone,” was published earlier this month by What Writers Have Influenced Your Work? Mar 24, 2022 my work & 2022 I don’t think I’ve read an interview with a writer where the interviewer did not ask some version of this question. In responding to John When Did You Start Writing? Jan 15, 2022 my work & poetry & 2022 In March of 2020, just before the pandemic shutdown, I received from John Wisniewski the first two of the seven or eight questions that would The Music I’d Like to Put Back Into My Life Dec 26, 2020 my work & 2020 Those are my hands over the keys at the grand piano that stood in the parlor of the dorm I lived in when I attended Edinburgh University in the The Way Academia Is Supposed to Work Dec 22, 2020 my work & education & union issues & 2020 I can’t believe I’m writing this at 3:30 AM. I woke up about a half hour ago from a very disturbing dream, in which the character with whom I Publication News: Three New Poems in Two Lovely Publications Nov 26, 2020 my work & 2020 You’d think that being shut in during the pandemic would have left me enough time to keep this website up-to-date, right? Hah! I should, for Lines That Didn’t Make the Cut: Sometimes It’s Just a Big Mess Aug 5, 2020 poetry & my work & 2020 I don’t remember where the first two lines of this came from, but somehow it ended up being a very long poem spoken mostly by a woman deciding to Commonplace Question #2: Are the Poems Part of a Conversation? Jul 24, 2020 my work & poetry & commonplace questions & 2020 This question, from Commonplace episode #2, Rachel’s interview with Nick Flynn, brought me back to a conversation I had with a friend named Ellie Lines That Didn’t Make the Cut: Ruth’s Story Jul 1, 2020 my work & poetry & 2020 It wasn’t like I showed him anything he hadn’t seen before. Besides, he took the ones with clothes, the good ones, only if I did a few from Commonplace Question #1: How Did You Become a Poet? Jun 28, 2020 my work & poetry & commonplace questions & 2020 I’ve been listening to Rachel Zucker’s Commonplace podcast for about two and a half years now. If you don’t know it, it’s definitely worth checking The Ethics of Bearing Witness in Poetry to Violence and Trauma Jun 13, 2020 my work & poetry & 2020 The issues raised when one chooses to make literary art out of trauma are complex. Over at the Ploughshares blog, for example, Tracy Strauss has a Lines That Didn’t Make the Cut: Remembering Claudia Jun 3, 2020 poetry & my work & 2020 The revision process leaves every writer with bits and pieces of work that no longer belong to the poem or story or whatever where they first Rachelle Escamilla’s Interview With Me On “Out of Our Minds” on Kkup Cupertino | San Jose Jan 26, 2018 my work & audio & 2018 Rachelle Escamilla · Richard Jeffrey Newman on KKUP I had the pleasure last week of spending an hour talking with Rachelle Escamilla, who