Richard Boyd: A lifelong passion for poetry

By Donald G. Redman

 

Richard Boyd
Posing by a new Poetry Box stationed
on Mandeville's Lakefront
Photo by Donald G. Redman

NOTE: I first met Richard Boyd in the early 1990s. I was a cub reporter for a small town daily and he was a grizzled journalist covering the same small town, but for a much larger metropolitan newspaper. Despite the competitive nature of our business, Richard was always a kind and gracious man with a charming sense of humor. And he wrote some of the best ledes I’ve ever read.

Over the years and through career changes, I still managed to run into Richard every now and again, but in a different capacity – he as a poet and the unofficial curator of the Dew Drop Social and Benevolent JazzHall in Mandeville, La. In fact, it was at the Dew Drop that I caught up with Richard again and discussed music and poetry. His poem, “No Hurricane Waltz,” was selected as the first poem to be displayed in a new art project – poetry boxes – the first of which is stationed on the Mandeville lakefront with more planned for throughout the community. He graciously agreed to an interview with The Redman Writing Project.

RWP: What were your earliest writing experiences?

BOYD:  I started writing song lyrics around 1954-55 when I was 12-13 years old and listening to the radio. I would write lyrics with specific rock ‘n’ roll singers in mind. At Perkinston High School in Perkinston, Miss. I was editor of the Bulldog Barks in my junior and senior years. It was the Perkinston Jr. College paper actually, but the school asked me to be editor because those two years no college students were interested. Then I went on to Perkinston Jr. College for two years and continued as editor. I had some poems published in some student collections in high school but no longer recall those details.

RWP:  At what point did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

BOYD:  I don't recall ever thinking I wanted to ever do anything else but write. My mother was a writer for the Biloxi-Gulfport Daily Herald so I think she was the major influence and through her I was able to intern at the Daily Herald for four years of high school doing mostly sports, some general news and I also got paid to attend high school sports in upper Harrison County and file stories on scores. I was born in Gulfport on June 19, 1942 and from third grade on was raised 18 miles north of Gulfport.

RWP:  Did you fall into poetry or was it the other way around – you were a poet who fell into journalism?

BOYD:  My early years of writing song lyrics in the early 1950s soon evolved into writing poetry on topics beyond the scope of pop songs. Throughout  high school and college (I also attended and got degree at the University of Southern Mississippi) I always wrote poetry and over 55 years as professional journalist I always wrote poetry. I probably write more now since retiring 6 years ago after 31 years with The Times-Picayune.

RWP:  Tell us about your poetry:

BOYD:  Much of my poetry reflects my deep appreciation of nature and my deep interest in music, rhythm and the flowing vapor of the finely wrote and delicate line that will come quietly and often vanish like the vapor if not captured during its brief appearance.

  

RWP:  Most writers will tell you that there is a particular time of the day they feel they are most creative and do most of their writing. When do you do the bulk of your writing?

BOYD:  I do most of my writing in early to late afternoon sitting on my front porch in my rocking chair sipping on glass of red wine and writing in longhand in a yellow legal pad. I retype and edit and rework poems on the computer and keep them stored in an office program on my computer but I cannot compose originally on a computer. Old school for me -- all my poems began as handwritten on pages of legal pads and then later typed into and saved on my computer.

RWP:  What is the most difficult aspect of writing for you?

BOYD:  Carving out time to turn off all other influences and just concentrate on poetry made more difficult since I retired by my involved in more civic activities than I should be volunteering to do.

RWP:  What are you writing today?

BOYD:  Got beginnings of a couple of poems to work on this afternoon.

RWP:  What advice would you give to novice poets?

BOYD:  I tell novice poets to write as much as possible and to find outlets to read their work to others in poetry reading groups. I have moderated poetry readings at 5 different locations in western St. Tammany since 2000 and now belong to a group Poets! Alive! that meets near Madisonville the fourth Saturday of each month.

RWP:  Tell us your involvement in Dew Drop.

BOYD:  With the Dew Drop as a reporter for 10 years in the St. Tammany Bureau of The Times-Picayune I early upon arriving on the north shore became aware of the old building and started doing research and soon got directed to documentation about it in university collections in New Orleans and started writing various stories about it. My goal was to try to rekindle interest in the city of Mandeville to officially acknowledging this historic shrine and making sure it endured. Shortly after I retired, then Mandeville Council members Trilby Lenfant and Zella Walker created the non-profit Friends of the Dew Drop and asked me to be a charter member, which I agreed with delight to become. I have stayed with it ever since and helped write the application that got it National Register of Historic Places status and now I book most of the spring and fall shows, sell our merchandise and just volunteer for anything involving the Dew Drop.

List five of your favorite poets and or authors:

BOYD:  Favorite 5 poets: Ezra Pound, ee cummings, Jack Kerouac, T.S Eliot, Andrienne Rich 

List ten books you’ll never forget:

BOYD:  10 books: The Cantos by Ezra Pound; Wasteland; all of Jack Kerouac; Dune Trilogy; Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell; most of Zane Grey; Intruder In The Dust by Faulkner; poetry of W.B. Yeats; poetry of Robert Burns; Treasure of the Sierre Madre by B. Traven.

RWP:  What are you reading right now?

BOYD:  Reading now The Poem of a Life, a biography by Mark Scroggins of Louis Zukofsky, a poet and contemporary of Kerouac, Ginsburg and the Beats in New York City in the ’50s.

RWP:  Where can people find your work and where can they follow you?

BOYD:   I really do not have my poetry posted anywhere.  But anyone in the area who wants to hear me read can come to Christwood Retirement Center from 2:30-4:30 pm last Saturday of each month for readings by us in Poets! Alive! group.