An Interview with Richard Newman

Richard Newman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Blues at the End of the World (Kelsay Books, 2024), and the novel Graveyard of the Gods. His work has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Best American Poetry, Boulevard, I-70 Review (featured poet), Innisfree Poetry Journal, Literary Matters, Poetry East, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and many other magazines and anthologies. He currently teaches Creative Writing and World Literature at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. Before moving to the Maghreb, he and his family lived in Vietnam, Japan, and the Marshall Islands.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

Currently I am a professor at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, where I teach creative writing and world literature. I’ve taught at colleges or universities all over the world—the Marshall Islands, Vietnam—and at universities in the US, too, in St. Louis and Indiana. I was the editor and executive director of River Styx for twenty-two years, which may have been the job I loved the most. Until I suddenly didn’t anymore. I realized all the papers I was grading and all the workshops I was doing and all submissions I was reading had killed my love of reading, which is why I became an editor and teacher in the first place. So I not only quit but moved out of the US.

I was a software end-user tester for an investment management company, which was the most boring job I’ve ever had. I got the job because I’m like the opposite of King Midas when it comes to technology—everything I touch goes to hell. They figured if something could go wrong, it will go wrong when Newman goes through it. It was so boring I celebrated when I was laid off.

After mowing lawns, my first job was as the house bass player of a civic theater orchestra, and I’ve been a semi-professional musician and songwriter ever since. I’m sure this affects my poetry in terms of musicality, rhythm, and structure, but I always keep them separate because songwriting and poetry are distinctly different. You get away with things in songs you could never get away with in a poem on the page, but there are things you could write in a poem that would be ridiculous if sung, unbearably pretentious.

I’ve worked as a housepainter, a groundskeeper for a Victorian Park in St. Louis, a copy monkey for Kinko’s copies, a community organizer, a librarian, and a music and book reviewer for several publications in St. Louis. In high school back in Evansville, Indiana, I worked kitchen prep and as a busboy for an Italian restaurant until I spilled water all over a customer and his food. I worked as an editor of a corporate computer magazine for a while until I was fired after I quit. Wow, that’s a lot of stupid jobs. And I’m sure I’m forgetting some.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Blues at the End of the World means more to me than it would to someone seeing the title for the first time. I left the US in July of 2016, right before the ongoing Trumpocalypse. My daughter had graduated from college and didn’t necessarily need me around anymore. My band had broken up. My girlfriend and I had broken up. And I was tired of editing the literary magazine I’d edited for twenty-two years. I found myself teaching at a college in The Marshall Islands, which I think I’d barely heard of before I applied for the gig. Upon arriving, I was struck by the shades of blue everywhere—just the lagoon behind my bungalow must have had forty shades of blue in it. And it looked like the end of the world, just blue ocean stretching endlessly in every direction until it met with the blue sky. So the title Blues at the End of the World fits for that reason, but also after the Trumpocalypse people everywhere felt like the world was going to end. It didn’t. I met a woman from Japan. Her office was a couple doors down from mine, and I basically followed her to Japan, where we got married in a traditional Shinto ceremony. Then we moved to Vietnam. In all those places I found themes of the end of the world enriched by blueness. Vietnam is called Land of the Blue Dragon. The Japanese national football team is Samurai Blue. The book is in three sections—The Marshall Islands, Japan, and Vietnam. In addition to exploring those places, the book hits such themes as leaving my home country, my roots, the Midwest, the loss of that, and I suppose singing some blues to mark that loss.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

The cover makes my heart jump, even months after publication and doing a book tour. A friend found the image for me online on the website of this fantastic photographer, Claire Rowntree. It’s from Bai Thu Long Bay, a magical and mysterious part of Vietnam, which also looks like the end of the world. I tried using some of my own pictures taken there. No one really responded. Then my friend showed me a beautiful and successful image, a vastly superior version of what I was trying to do (with my phone camera! Hahaha!). I asked Claire and she graciously gave me permission to use the image. I invite readers to check out her website. I find all of her images stunning and beautiful.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Beethoven, Tom Waits, and the Rolling Stones are the perpetual soundtrack to my life.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I’m beyond the point of worrying about any kind of writing career. I’m not interested in the hamster wheel of publications and awards and climbing an academic career path. I write for myself. These cold mountain mornings alone in my office are both a meditative experience and also a practice of the craft of writing for the joy of writing. That said, when I first left the US I kept a travelogue of my life in the Marshall Islands and sent it to friends. Blues at the End of the World is the poetry version of that travelogue, covering three countries and themes of home, loss, strangeness, love, foods, different cultures, and both breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking poverty. So this book is also for anyone who is curious about the world outside of the US and would love to travel but for whatever reason can’t, at least not now. Also, the book contains traditional forms like sonnets, triolets, ballads, tanka, and haibun, but also poems influenced by Pacific Island chants as well as good old-fashioned free verse and blank verse. The book is for readers who like song forms as well as narrative poems.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

Morocco is properly called the Maghreb, which means the west or sunset kingdom. Sunsets here are spectacular. The landscape is often harsh and a little bleak, just how I like it. So my next book is centered in Morocco, but as I approach sixty, it deals with themes of aging, mortality, death, loss, ghosts living and dead, haunted ruins—you know, the sunset years in all their golden dreariness. I anticipate an international bestseller. Well, my wife and I made a little boy, now five, and he figures prominently in the book too, and he “sunnies it up” (as my dear former teacher Molly Peacock used to say) quite a bit. Maybe I’ll use some of his art on the cover. He’s my favorite project of all. Other projects? I continue to work on my jumpshot.

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