Get to Know a Local Poet: Jeremy Richards

My first introduction to Jeremy Richards was via YouTube, where I watched a video of him rap about T.S Elliot at the 2002 National Poetry Slam. The performance and poem were incredible, but found myself a little confused. Who is this guy? I thought, and how does he know how to seamlessly combine lines from Elliot’s well-known debut poem with such streetwise statements as, “Who’s your daddy now?”

Richards’ background explains some of his skill: he is a writer, actor and radio producer whose work has appeared in such places as McSweeney’s, The Poetry Foundation, Rattle and on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He has been a member of Seattle’s National Poetry Slam team and won the Bumbershoot Poetry Slam three times. He has also performed on HBO’s “Def Poetry” and was described by Mos Def (Yeah, that’s right—the Mos Def) as “Damn! Jeremy Richards is pretty good!” Not to argue with anyone who has made a living out of rhyming words for rap lyrics, but Jeremy Richards is more than just pretty good. His poetry is hilarious, well written, thoughtful and easily accessible to even the densest of poetry readers. Here, he answers some questions on his background, Seattle’s poetry scene and who will be the next historical figure he brings into this century.

Alexis Morley: I hear you are working on a musical about philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Can you tell me more about that?

Jeremy Richards: For my final capstone project for my MA in Cultural Studies at UW, I wrote the book and lyrics for “Nietzsche! The Musical.” It’s a culmination of all of my interests, both creative and academic. Drawing on intensive research, I explore the life and work of Nietzsche through a surreal lens. Here is a spectacle that can appeal to a wide audience, but within that, there are deeper issues of philosophy, faith, ethics, interpretation and the gulf between intention and effect. It’s funny, I hope, but the humor isn’t capricious. It’s a reflection of the terrifying incongruity between Nietzsche’s ideas and his legacy. What we cannot fathom is so overwhelming, it’s absurd. There’s still darkness here, but with Nietzsche’s command to “kill the spirit of gravity” and to accompany every truth with laughter, the only response we have is release. (You know what E.B. White said about analyzing humor and dissecting a frog? When it comes to the aesthetics of humor, I bring on an apocalyptic rain of dead frogs.)

For this project, I teamed up with the brilliant composer Rob Scherzer, who has taken my insane lyrics and turned them into songs that range from gospel to tango to the appropriately-titled “Vaguely Wagnerian.”  It’s a bit ambitious, but the latest draft of the script has managed to please both Nietzsche scholars and those who don’t know the first thing about the philosopher. I’m excited to see how director Kate Jaeger and our talented cast bring that dynamic range to the stage.

“Nietzsche! The Musical” goes up May 14 at Seattle’s Market Theatre. If it’s a success, it will be a tremendous validation of all the study and practice of every craft I’ve pursued so far. I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

AM: How has being an actor affected your poetry?

JR: I started studying acting in high school, around the same time I became immersed in classic poetry, so the two have always worked in tandem. Beyond the obvious influence on my performance of poetry, my acting and improv have led me into playwriting, which naturally spills over to some poems that straddle the worlds between verse and monologue.

AM: Who are some of your influences?

JR: Gabrielle Bouliane, Karen Finneyfrock, Anne Carson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dean Young, Mary Ruefle, Heather McHugh, Tony Hoagland, Ai, Theodore Roethke, Tom Stoppard, Jack Handey, Naomi Shihab Nye, John Hodgman, Alfred North Whitehead and scores of other poets, playwrights, humorists and theorists. I subscribe to Jonathan Lethem’s notion of the “ecstasy of influence.” Lethem quotes Ned Rorem: “Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing.” In other words, I could never trace all of my debts and influences. Maybe I should include my cat.

AM: What are some of your pet peeves about writing spoken word/slam poetry?

JR: The jury’s still out on whether slam is a de facto genre, but there are certain patterns in competitive performance that we might call “slam poetry.” Drawing out these distinctions, the expectations of a restless audience will make me consider the narrative, humor and cadence necessary to make a poem accessible for a fleeting appraisal. It’s not much different from the considerations of a playwright. Unless you’re Shakespeare, you can rarely convey the complexity of page poetry that survives the immediacy of performance.

If there’s frustration there, in the competitive context, it’s that slam still insists on choosing three random judges to determine which poets advance to read again, which sometimes compels us to avoid risk in order to please those who are (usually) least familiar with poetry. That’s not a call for elitism, but a lament about the institutional amnesia in slam. Because judges have to be unbiased and unacquainted with the poets, it’s likely they’ve never seen the same clichés, tropes and manipulations used again and again, so they tend to reward those spectacles over poetry that’s more fresh and daring.

Exceptions abound, of course, in poets who take risks with intricate and novel work and still win slams: Patricia Smith, Roger Bonair-Agard, Karen Finneyfrock, Alvin Lau and Karyna McGlynn, to name a few. But I haven’t reached their genius.

AM: What is the best thing about the Seattle poetry community? And the worst?

JR: The best thing about Seattle’s poetry community is its openness and encouragement of new talent. We often talk about the “slam family” on both a local and national scale, and that’s true here. After moving here in early 2001, I entered my first poetry slam, and I remember Gabrielle Bouliane and Karen Finneyfrock approaching me and offering their feedback and guidance, which continues to this day. When Gabrielle passed away recently, it sent shockwaves through the entire community. It felt like we all lost a close family member. Her influence is still strong with the Seattle and national poetry community, and all of the tributes and memorials for Gabrielle served as testaments to how this family works.

The worst thing about the community? That it’s still fractured, still wrapped up in certain cliques. I served briefly on the board of the Washington Poets Association, and I admire what they’ve done to bring all of these communities together. I’d love to see more of that.

Read more about Jeremy Richards on his Web site, jeremyrichards.com.

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