Rich Ferguson

Randee Silv
November 2020

First, congrats on being selected as California’s Beat Poet Laureate for September 2020-2022 by The National Beat Poetry Foundation. Part of that role is to “raise national consciousness about the Beat Generation.” As Poet Laureate, what might you have brewing or already in the works?

The Beat Poetry Foundation hasn’t yet given me a list of specific goals to accomplish during my tenure, so at this point, I’m creating my own path. So far, I’ve engaged in a couple of small side projects with S.F. Poet Laureate, Kim Shuck, assisting her in finding California poets for a daily poem project. Additionally, I’ve had the good fortune to work with NYC poet/educator Bob Holman, offering some words to his “Poetry is Like Bread” Ghazal project. I’ve also had one of my spoken-word/music videos recently accepted into the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. I’ve worked with Thomas Zandegiacomo Bel Bel in the past (he’s screened a couple of my other videos at prior festivals).

I’m specifically proud of this latest video (“All Strong Souls Survive”) as it’s the first spoken word/music video that I’ve created on my own. This was due to the fact that we’d gone into quarantine here in L.A. and I was suddenly left without the ability to physically get together with collaborators like filmmakers, editors, fellow musicians, etc. Still, I felt a deep drive to continue creating videos so I overcame my fears and lack of technical skills and just went for it. I guess you can say that’s been one of the silver linings of the pandemic: it forces people like me to explore new creative avenues, etc. they might not have otherwise explored had they been going about their everyday lives.

I’ve also been contacting different poets across the country, either by Zoom or email, trying to figure out ways we can collaborate. One that comes to mind is the east-coast poet, Paul Richmond. We’ve been brainstorming ways to better create and publicize poetry videos, and how to make live events safer (once they start happening on a wider scale). As I mentioned above, things are tougher these days because it’s more difficult for me to collaborate with poets as I normally would have prior to the pandemic.

I’m also teaching online now and that takes up so much more time than teaching in person. With online education, I have to spend more time crafting lessons that keep students creatively engaged over periods of time while they’re stuck at home, staring at their computers, and tempted to do other things like watch T.V. or play with cell phones or toys. I’ve been doing a lot of poetry with my fifth-grade students. Just yesterday, in fact, I turned them on to blackout/erasure poetry, and before that, some of my students have been making poetry videos and creating short musical compositions. Once I’m on another break from teaching, it’ll be easier for me to put my head back into working on bigger projects with poets across California and the world. Yes, ultimately, that’s what I want to do, raise the interest and acceptance of poetry, whether it be through live performance, spoken word/music videos, or poetry on the page. I’ll close by saying this about raising the awareness of poetry: one of the greatest compliments I ever received was when some guy came up to me after seeing me perform with a group of musicians at a club. He said, “I used to not like poetry. I thought it was snobby and out of my reach. But seeing the way you did poetry, that makes me like it. That makes me want to even do it.” His words, you can say, were pure poetry to my ears.

On your website there’s a mention that you were featured in the film “What About Me.” How did that fall into place?

The story of how I became involved with that film is one I love to tell, and it’s definitely a situation that would not have happened had it not been for the wonders of the internet. Back around 2003, thereabouts, I saw a film called “1 Giant Leap” that was directed by Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman. The film was an intricately interwoven tapestry of music, dance, philosophy, culture studies, you name it. Jamie and Duncan, both musicians, traveled all over the world to make this film. It was an absolute feast for the eyes and ears. I was so blown away by the film that I sent Jamie an email to let him know how much his film had meant to me. Jamie got back to me fairly quickly and asked me what I did, and what I was up to.

At that time, I’d just released one of my very first spoken word videos, “Bones”, and sent him a link to it. He promptly got back to me, told me he loved my work and said they were going to be coming through L.A. in the next number of months to film a sequel to “1 Giant Leap” (“What About Me?)” and asked if I’d liked to be filmed. Well, needless to say, that was like a dream come true, and I didn’t need to be asked twice. I promptly said yes. After a number of months of me not hearing from Jamie, and wondering if the event was going to even happen, I got a call from him saying that he and Duncan were in L.A. I drove to their hotel in West Hollywood, we hopped in their rental car and started driving east on Sunset, scouting out locations. My portion in the film was shot in Echo Park by the lake. I’m so proud of my work in that film and even prouder of the film itself. I’m towards the end, right between Krishna Das and Michael Franti, two guys whose work I greatly admire. Michael Stipe is also in the film, so is k.d. lang, Deepak Chopra, and others. That experience was really a dream come true. I’m forever indebted to Jamie and Duncan for allowing me to be a part of that experience.

After reading your description of the films, I did find links for them, and it’s distinctive how the music drives everything else that happens. In your spoken word videos, you also capture a similar buzz, essence, spirit, musicality in how you use visual rhythm in dialogue with words, and you do all this with such a diversity of styles. I’m curious, what led you to turn poems on the page into videos?

That’s an excellent question. Some years ago, I spent time in San Francisco playing drums and singing in a band (Blue Movie), while also performing spoken word in clubs and poetry venues all over the city. I’d also perform spoken word in Blue Movie from time to time, stepping out from behind my drums, going into the audience and launching some crazed rap on an unsuspecting attendee. When I moved to L.A. and began performing poetry at open mics, bars, and other venues, I noticed the singer/songwriters with acoustic guitars faring far better than any poet when it came to grabbing the audience’s attention. So, given my band experience, I began performing spoken word with musicians. That allowed me to gain a broader, more diverse audience. And while I enjoyed blending music with my poetry, I needed to go further—take my work out of the smoky bars and poetry venues and into another arena altogether different. That’s when I realized I needed to venture into a visual realm.

My first spoken-word video was created by a guy here in L.A.—the amazing Gerry Fialka. He has an international PXLfest where people submit videos made on those old Fisher-Price PXL cameras that never really gained popularity with kids but were later widely used by indie filmmakers. With his PXL-cam, Gerry created my very first spoken-word video, “Bones.”  As crude as it was, that video was actually what grabbed the attention of Jamie Catto and led him to put me in his film “What About Me?” From that tiny wonder of a video, I’ve had the good fortune to collaborate with filmmaker/directors such as Mark Wilkinson (“All the Times” and “Human Condition”) and Chris Burdick (“Another Day in L.A.” and “In the Gomorrah of Glamour and Gimme All You Can”). I’ve even been fortunate enough to have some of my spoken-word/music videos featured in Berlin’s ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival and Vancouver’s Visible Verse Festival.

Yes, your words definitely should be performed. They should be heard. The electrifying rhythmic energy, so alive in “Bones,” runs through all your projects. I can see how collaborating with musicians, filmmakers, directors and producers has definitely expanded possibilities. In January, your new book “Everything is Radiant Between the Hates” is coming out on Moon Tide Press. There’s also this amazing video with the same title.   Tell us more.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s quite a challenge to create videos with collaborators during the quarantine. But I was up for the challenge, so I contacted my buddy, Butch Norton (Lucinda Williams’ drummer). The two of us have worked on numerous past projects, so we wanted to figure out a way to collaborate while not being in the same physical space. Since I had a pretty strong beat in my head for the soundtrack of “Everything is Radiant Between the Hates”, I had Butch send me various film clips of him playing drums at that particular tempo. He ended up sending me this one primal beat that I thought nailed the sentiment of the poem perfectly.

My next challenge: I’d never done much film editing before, so I needed to figure out how to edit Butch’s drums in with my live performance, then combine that with my vocal tracks and accompanying music. Once I dove into the editing, I realized the learning curve wasn’t quite as steep as I’d imagined it to be. I quickly worked through certain doubts and fears to experience a challenging but totally engaging and exciting process. Definitely something I’d want to take on again at some point. During the video’s creation, I also had the good fortune to collaborate with a woman named Christianne Ray. She was assisting me with P.R. at the time and was totally game to assist with creative input and filming of the video. So, she put on her face mask and ventured with me through the streets of Venice, CA., finding places to film the video. I’m quite proud of the final product. It definitely lives up to its name: it was a moment of radiance during some dark times.

Everything works. There’s this organic syncopation happening throughout the whole piece. Even the editing of the images has its own poetic dynamism. I found myself going back & forth on your YouTube page trying to decide which of your videos to include with this interview. I thought we could end with this very moving piece “Things about Myself and the World that I Will and Won’t Explain to My Nearly 4-year-old Daughter when She’s Older”

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