Jack Straw Productions
[JSP Home] [Writers Forum Home] [Topical Index] [Discussion Board] [Contact Forum]

2004 Writers' Forum
Richard Denner
Richard Denner was born in 1941 in Santa Clara, California. Street poet of the 60s, he was the Poet of the Berkeley Barb. Self-exiled to the Alaskan outback, he graduated from U. of A. in Fairbanks, and in a wilderness cabin began printing chapbooks on a handpress with worn fonts of type; thirty years later, there are over one hundred titles in his backlists. Cowpoke, treeplanter on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens after the blast, longtime proprietor of Four Winds Bookstore and Cafe in Ellensburg, Washingtion, Denner is presently living near Sebastopol, California, and still reading his poems in coffeehouses. Visit his website www.dpress.net
photo credit:
richard denner
Conversation with Curator Belle Randall
In this interview, recorded March 5, 2004, Richard and Belle discuss personal influences, 'poetry,' pseudonyms, printing & publication, craft, Buddhism, existentialism, and more.
Listen to an excerpt of Richard's reading (MP3)
1:47 / 1 MB
Where on the Paper Chain Are You?

Flaky footing on the high unit
wind, snow at 4000 feet, a bitch
but it packs well around the pine plugs
above Indian Creek in the rocky outcroppings
not a forest, a farm, slash and burn, a war

We’re riding in a crummy
an orange International van beat to shit
the bad karma tipi that takes us to work
we’ve named it L.A.
so we can drive to work in L.A.

I want my forest cut into chips
so my grandchildren can have toilet paper

We need air and the mountains need cover
and the animals need homes
no matter if they’re in rows

Breathe into the pain or step out of the way
To read more work from the 2004 Jack Straw Writers Program, contact Jack Straw Productions to purchase a copy of Volume 8 of The Jack Straw Writers Anthology.

Jump to Richard Denner's Interview with 2004 Curator Belle Randall.
[JSP Home] [Writers Forum Home] [Topical Index] [Discussion Board] [Contact Forum]

Jack Straw: The Audio Arts Center for the Pacific Northwest