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The Sum of All Wisdom is built on a simple idea: music IS the sum of all wisdom.
More than a podcast, The Sum of All Wisdom is a community and resource platform dedicated to exploring music as a way of knowing. Music is humanity's oldest way of knowing and one of our best technologies for making meaning, and through long-form conversations with musicians, producers, writers, and cultural thinkers—along with performances, essays, and educational resources—we investigate the creative life and what it teaches us about memory, identity, creativity, community, and the human condition.
Whether you're a musician, artist, scholar, or simply someone who loves music and believes it matters, The Sum of All Wisdom is an invitation to listen more deeply: to great music, to the people who make it, and to the wisdom gained through a life devoted to music and musical worlds.
Because music is more than entertainment. It is one of humanity's most ancient ways of understanding the universe and our place in it.
Scott Catey (00:00)
Words, meaning, and wisdom. These are the tools, the techniques that we work with here at the Sum of All Wisdom. And today we've got something very special queued up and ready to stream. It all begins with poetry. But where does poetry begin? Thoughts? Words? Rhythm? to get some answers to these questions, I'm talking today with Rich Ferguson.
LA poet and spoken word performer whose poetry and performances unite breath and rhythm, muscle and memory, music and silence. His work lives in him as it lives in the imagination of his audience, and as it flows among the larger currents of surrounding voices. Rich is the former California beat poet laureate, but more than that, he's also a drummer, a novelist, an editor, a performer.
And an exemplary creative collaborator. His work draws from the restless spirits of the beats, but it is rooted firmly in consciousness and awareness, and in the present, in a culture struggling to pay attention and in the communities where art still brings people together. In this conversation, we traverse the United States digging into the essences of Rich's work, and to bring it all home, he delivers, he really embodies his poem Live and Die in LA.
A propulsive spoken word portrait of a city and an identity built from glamour and grief, beauty and brutality, history and reinvention. A city carried in the blood and breath of the poet. It's amazing. Stick around. This is Rich Ferguson on the sum of all wisdom.
Scott (01:38)
We can we can start with an origin story, like how did you sort of get to be a poet? and who your mentors were and how you bring that forward,
So I'd love to hear about, you know, you land in San Francisco and who who did you meet? How did you meet them? What what what what was your entree into the field of becoming a poet?
Rich (02:13)
Well,
So after I graduated Rutgers University with a degree in advertising and public relations, much to my dad's chagrin, I wanted to move out to California and play music. So I packed my drums up in my car, headed out to California, and ended up in San Francisco. Started going to poetry readings.
Scott (02:39)
Mm.
Rich (02:39)
Was really motivated
Scott (02:40)
you
Rich (02:40)
by that. I had these plexiglass bongos and I'd play the bongos and do poetry and eventually met a guitar player. We formed a duo. We eventually met a bass player and started a band. By that point I had been playing my bongos so much it felt really weird to sit down again and play a traditional
Scott (03:04)
you
Rich (03:04)
drum set. So I reinvented my style.
played standing up, very dynamic, doing songs, doing poetry, just being this ball of energy. And then after that group kind of fell apart after about four years, I made my way to LA, which is where I am now,
Scott (03:26)
Hmm.
Rich (03:28)
took a break from music for a little while, and then just started getting deep into the poetry scene.
was meeting people like S.A. Griffin, Iris Berry, different folks here in LA. Became introduced to Beyond Baroque, the oldest literary centers here in LA, which is still very important to me Started doing shows there, then started getting back into music, incorporating more spoken word into my music
Doing more hybrids of spoken word and music, which is where I am today with with my video work and also live performances. I I I will do a number of performances where I just perform solo, but being a drummer, having played in so many bands, I also like bringing music into it because I I I like weaving
Because I'm a drummer, my voice I consider a musical instrument. So I
Scott (04:34)
and
Rich (04:35)
like weaving my voice into the music. I also like because music is a bridge that I think can sometimes reach wider audiences than if
I were
Scott (04:48)
Mm-hmm.
Rich (04:48)
to just on stage and do a poem, which I love doing, but when you bring music into the mix it
kind of broadens the opportunity and allows more people a gateway into the experience. So that's that's where I am short long story short, that's where I am today.
Scott (05:14)
Yeah, cool. Tell me.
Rich (05:16)
And well, I one more thing. one of my longtime collaborators who is just on your show, Butch Norton, who I
Scott (05:23)
Yeah.
Rich (05:23)
love dearly, and who will we be playing together in October at Poet Film Stage, and we can talk about that in a while. But Butch and I have done a number of live performances. He's performed on a number of my spoken word music videos, so I
Deeply enjoy my collaborators, Butch being right there at the top of the list.
Scott (05:50)
It's evident that you guys really mesh together watching you watching him do his drumming while you're performing a poem. For me, it's magical, right? It really transports me into, I think, where you're coming from with both the music and the words. So it works well. It shows that you guys get along in that musical sense, right? Kind of a DNA double helix, if you will. Tell me, Rich, what?
So you wrote a book or you edited a book, Beat Not Beat. Tell me about beat poetry. What is it? What's the... I mean, I have a sense of what it was then. What is it now? How has beat poetry evolved and what's the tradition look like now?
Rich (06:39)
Yeah. I've I've written a few books, but in regards to Beat Not Beat bum badda bum Beat Not Beat
Scott (06:47)
Nice.
Rich (06:50)
and as the title implies
You know, we have the tradition of beat poetry, and and there are some really notable beat poets in the collection, Ferlinghetti, people like Jim Morrison, Ann Waldman, all these wonderful people in the collection. Ann Waldman being a dear personal favorite of mine. And
What we were interested, I was the lead editor, but I also worked with S.A. Griffin, who I mentioned earlier, Alexis
Scott (07:25)
Mm-hmm.
Rich (07:26)
Rome Fancher, former San Francisco poet laureate Kim Shuck. And we we focused on California poets. And we were we we didn't want to do another sort of rehashing of the beat poets because that's, you know, been done.
and and it's been done really well. We wanted to kind of find intersections between, you know, a lot of the elements that Beats brought us, you know, the the social consciousness, political consciousness, talking about, you know, the the rhythm and and you know the the rhythm of the words, the the lyrics, the social justice. And we wanted to
look at poets not only reflect upon the past and honor the past but really bring it into the now and and look at how poets in contemporary work are either consciously or maybe in more subtle ways bringing some of those beat elements to the work now and then where that is taking us.
for example, working with Kim Shuck up in San Francisco, she was able to turn me on to poets that that I wasn't so familiar with their work. Tongo Eisen-Martin, who's currently the poet laureate of San Francisco, you know, Kim introduced me to his work and y you know, SA brought in
Ferlinghetti and you know, through him we were also able to get the Jim Morrison poem. So the the editors really did a wonderful job of of complimenting the poets that I was bringing in and really weaving together the past, the present, and also looking toward the future.
Scott (09:29)
For
me, the beat tradition has really been about forms of consciousness. When I read beat poetry or when I hear beat poetry, it's about not just consciousness, but paying attention and the ways that we pay attention, right? So there's direct experience, there's artistic risk, there's spontaneity. Kerouac was really into spontaneous prose for instance.
Rich (09:50)
Mm. Absolutely.
Scott (09:52)
And so much of it circulated around the ideas of jazz and bringing in Monk and Bird and all those jazz artists that were experimenting and using novel forms of communication to convey the sense of consciousness and awareness of the world, right? And so for me, I think the beats that the original beat generation in that post-war America thing talking about
You've got to come out of this thing that you are in, America, and be and do something different. And it feels to me like we are in a moment again, that's very similar to that. We're stuck in this, I mean, I don't want to turn this into a political conversation, but we are in a moment when attention is being sucked away, sapped, and we don't have the consciousness that we used to blame AI, blame television, blame radio, right? There's all kinds of media that feed into our distractibility and
poetry, especially like the things that the links that you sent me, those links to these extended presentations, various poets cycling through a performance routine, right? It's so powerful in the sense of grounding me and giving me something to do that's not distracted. I'm focused, I'm listening, I'm paying attention.
And I find that my consciousness changes. It might not be permanent in that moment, but I find myself doing things differently after having listened to those wonderful, I would say, things that you sent me.
Rich (11:27)
Yeah.
You know, poet you know, as you mentioned, you know, post war and and you know, with and and the whole beat experience, it was like they really found their moment. It was really a perfect moment, like a time when we really needed something like beat poetry, like you said, to kind of try to wake us up. And you
Scott (11:49)
Mm.
Rich (11:50)
know, and those reverberations are still being experienced to this day.
And you know, poetry has poetry is one of those things that it kind of comes in and out of fashion, you know, back in the the 90s, late 90s or whatever, you know, there was the MTV raps and you know, and you know, and y poetry has gone through different cycles and different periods like poetry is in the spotlight again. And then it kind of like, you know.
goes back into hibernation a little bit. I mean, we poets are always doing our work. I'm talking more about as far as the collective consciousness and and how people experience poetry. But yeah, you're right. You know now in society is one of those moments where we really could use another awakening and another like wake up, you know. And I I don't I don't
I mean, I would love to think that poetry could come to the fore. I mean, it's already there. We're already doing it. We poets are on the front lines doing our work and you know what that's about. But as far as the the wider audience, I don't know. I I I would love to think that we could have another moment like that, but but I'm not sure. What do what do you think about that?
Scott (13:21)
I
think we are, for me it's a consumerism issue, right? I mean, we're so enamored with the quick ways of having access to anything we want. And partly that is, that's part of the help for distraction that takes us out of anything like thoughtfulness and how we, I don't like the word consume, but I think it's appropriate for the moment, right? We are just consuming, we're a machine eating up all kinds of things.
whether that's politics or clickbait or even artistic productions, right? Creativity, I think, is being consumed in the same way. so it has to be a sort of, for me, it has to be a mutual constitution. We have to change our perception at the same time that we change our habits, right? So it's a sort of embodied cognition. We have to be more aware, I think, of how we...
let things come into our lives and stop consuming in that rapacious kind of way, that extractive kind of way and be more thoughtful. So I'm with you, right? I think poets and musicians are exactly the front line of that. But getting those voices in front of people in a way that's not three or five second sound bites that are scrolled past on an Instagram feed or something equivalent.
is, I think, a huge challenge. I don't know that I've got any prescriptions for that challenge right now.
Rich (14:53)
Yeah, no, it's a it's a hard one. But you're right, you know, when when it just is reduced to these scrolling moments, it's like poetry sort of becomes like these disposable voices, you know, to the
Scott (15:08)
Hmm.
Rich (15:09)
extent like, okay, next, next, next. And you know, some of it sticks or whatever. But you know, that kind of leads me into my thoughts about
the work that my wife Kathleen Florence and I are doing with Poet Film Stage, which is
Scott (15:26)
Yeah.
Rich (15:26)
a live experience rather than you know something to be scrolled. It's it's it's a live experience, it's it's curated, Kathleen and I direct it. And basically what we're working on is is taking the traditional what we consider to be like a traditional poetry reading where
A poet will get up on stage, read a poem, applause, read another poem, do a set, maybe another poet will get up, do their set. And those readings are great. I've done countless numbers of events over the years and have produced a number of those events myself. I love them. But what we've been doing with Poet Film Stage is.
We've been putting poems in conversation with each other, different styles, different perspectives. And what we do is we have a poet come we basically we create an ensemble. We'll we'll collect work from a a number of poets that we've asked to participate in the event. We'll collect different poems, and then what we do is we select the poems and put them into a narrative arc where it
Scott (16:45)
Mm.
Rich (16:45)
has a sense of
And a sense of narrative story. And then we'll also include vignettes with actors. Jay Paulson, Phil Abrams. They've been some of our past actors who've performed with us, Amy Roche. So we we weave together an evening that's poetry, vignettes.
music again Butch is gonna be doing the music. He's gonna be doing like a drumscape, like a drum soundtrack, a live drum soundtrack for the evening October twenty third
at Beyond Baroque. And so we put all these elements in in in conversation with one another. A poet will get up. They won't introduce themselves, they won't
necessarily introduce the poem unless the title is important to give some context to the piece, but otherwise they'll get up, they'll read, they'll perform their piece, and then they'll sit down. And then we move on to the next. And and again we have this sort of weaving of styles, voices,
Something that I really love about it is no one poem or no one poet is particularly the destination. Everyone is is part of a journey. So and the audience becomes part of the journey too, because it's it's interactive and it's is I guess you could equate it to a film in a way where you have you know a scene of a film.
can be really beautiful in and of itself. But really what what makes that scene, what makes the movie is it's all the more informed when you think about what's come before it and what comes after that scene. And also the silences, you know, you were you
Scott (18:44)
Hmm.
Rich (18:44)
know, we've we talked about music. Like one of the beautiful things about music are the sil you know, and John Cage you know, it was we you know,
Scott (18:54)
That's right. Exactly. Yeah.
Rich (18:56)
he really helped out
Exploring those silences. But silences are an element that really helped to make music so beautiful. And also silences with the work we're doing with Poet Film Stage, you know, when doing transitions. Some and sometimes there'll be musical interludes between the poets, you know, like a soundtrack of a film, but sometimes there are just these silences where people
can
Scott (19:22)
Mm
Rich (19:23)
really think about what they've experienced. And also then we have.
themes that echo one another and it it's it's this interlink linking of experiences. So that's something that Kathleen and I have been working on and and working to further per perfect over these last three years. Like three years we've been working on it and each time
We we discover, you know, the core of it a little bit more. It's like, yeah, this is this is, you know, and and it helps to inform the next Poet Film Stage that we're doing. And is it gonna, you know, help to have
Scott (20:07)
Thank you.
Rich (20:08)
this poetic reawakening that we've been talking about? Well, it becomes part of the conversation, but but it's
also just it's it's a contribution that we are offering to help.
Evolve the live poetic experience.
Scott (20:27)
As I was watching, one of the links. you sent me, Rich, speaking of silences, one of the things I really, I found to be very potent in this particular film was
there was a kind of a dance, two actors of man and woman came out and they kind of fell in love, made love.
Rich (20:43)
yeah. Yeah. Paul Rosh. Mm-hmm.
Scott (20:47)
I think that she presented him with a satchel. And I think the satchel for
Rich (20:52)
Mm-hmm.
Scott (20:53)
me that represented that she had gotten pregnant and he was not interested and walked away. And that sort of wrapped up that scene. But that scene was so moving. A, I thought they portrayed it very well.
be in the context of the narrative arc that you're talking about and the silences that accompany that performance. It really felt to me like...
I became part of what was happening and it felt new and really innovative and it linked things very well from the poem perspective. The poems that were on either side of that performed piece were great in terms of how it all meshed together. And so I began thinking about, you know,
humanity, right? We are human. How do we express our humanity and through creativity, right? Primarily for me, that's why I do what I do with this podcast. That's why I have folks like you on here to talk about these kinds of things. But the movement aspect I think gets lost sometimes in talking about
music especially, right? Butch was great talking about how he supports movement and the importance of movement. And I've been thinking lot about that. And that film, for me as I watched it was like, there's so much movement involved, not just in the performance, but of the movement of the poets through the screen, that it became obviously important to think and talk about exactly how that works for us.
Rich (22:34)
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up movement. In my last semester in college at Rutgers in New Jersey, I took a modern dance class
Scott (22:45)
Mm.
Rich (22:45)
and I loved it, you know. And so much so that I was thinking like, because my teacher was like, you've you've got potential, you could be really good, you know. And she had told me about a dance company in New York. She was like, You could go there. I could
you know, give you a good reference. And I was thinking like, maybe I'll go to New York and and pursue dance, pursue movement, but then music won out and I came to California. But I've always been attracted to movement. And you know, when I came here to LA, I I did some work occasionally with a a a wonderful choreographer here in LA, Rosanna Gamson.
Rosanna has this way, this really fine talent of bringing different performers in into into conversation like
traditional
Scott (23:45)
I
Rich (23:46)
dancers, which I wasn't one of those. I had a facility for movement, but she and and performers, you know, bring in all these people and and create these.
lavish productions where so much is going on and it's very layered. And so I I've really been attracted to that. And with playing drums and playing standing up and just being very physical and with my live and inspired by Ann Waldman, for years I've I've memorized my work because
Scott (24:26)
Hmm.
Rich (24:26)
I I
don't like to have to be encumbered with holding a physical paper. I like to be able to move my hands, move my arms, move my body, move around the stage. And if I'm holding papers or my phone or something, unless it's part of the act or something, I I would just rather, you know, put it up here so that I can just move my body. Sometimes I can sometimes I consider myself like the Joe Cocker of.
poetry because I could
Scott (24:56)
[laughs]
Rich (24:56)
you know you know but you know that's sort of my jam. But yeah, so it's cool that you bring up movement because I'm so attracted to movement. I love going to dance performance. I love incorporating movement into my own experience when I can when I'm performing and yes, Butch performing with with dancers, providing
drums and soundtracks. Yeah, I love I love and then and Butch and I also every like once a month, every couple months or something, we also play drums for a a a yoga teacher here in LA, Joe Kara. And and yoga is a dance too. It's just really fluid. And so we
We play drums for that and I'll do a poem at a certain point point in the class. So yeah, movement is it's the jam.
Scott (25:56)
That seems like the best yoga class in LA. Drums and poetry while you're downward dog. mean, come on, that's awesome.
Rich (26:02)
yeah, they're about eighty
to ninety people in the class. It's pretty amazing.
Scott (26:08)
Yeah, fantastic. And your performances that I've seen, I haven't had the opportunity to see you live yet, Rich, but I can't, I hope there's a day that I get to do that because your performance is very kinetic. It's so alive.
It encapsulates not just poetry and poetry in motion and humanity and creativity. It really feels like the "Speakers on the Green," like this is democracy in action. This is how we, the people, should be talking to each other, Debating, disagreeing, having all those conversations, but...
We don't do that. It's too dangerous to get into those spaces and movement feels like a dangerous thing to do on its own. It can be, right? It can be very forceful and destructive. But it can also be so evocative, like as I'm speaking, if I'm gesturing, I am able to convey so much more. And when we suppress the sort of body language.
It just seems like something else is lost. And so I really appreciate what I'm trying to say is I really appreciate the movement that you do when you perform.
Rich (27:23)
Yeah, I like to think
of it as without like trying to get too esoteric or anything, but I like to think of it as as an embodied experience. Like when I perform the poems, the work lives in my body, and part of that is just having gone through the process of memorizing it, of just speaking it so much and certain gestures I use as memory tricks to help me get to different
Points in the poem, but but it just becomes this embodied experience. And rather than poetry just like living in the mind or whatever, it it lives everywhere. It lives in in all parts of my body. And I I just I like to convey that and I like to share that.
Scott (28:11)
and it lives there over time, right? It comes from somewhere and you work with it, you polish it, you make it the thing that you then memorize and perform, and maybe it changes over time as you perform it. I'd love to hear from you, if you don't mind, Rich, the life cycle of a poem. How do they come to you? How do you create them? How do you shape them? How do you prepare them for performance? And then how do you perform them?
Rich (28:36)
Yeah. Well, they come to me in any number of ways. I'm my my publisher Eric Morago at Moontide Press, who did Beat Not Beat, but also my last two books, Somewhere a Playground and Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates,
So Eric, is is is a really wonderful editor. And I took the the collection which would become Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates. I took it to him, to Moontide.
But I just asked him to edit the work. And after he had edited the work, I was just like, Wow, you we speak the same language. You you have a pretty good affinity for my work. And then we just started working together. But he does a workshop and a lot of the work is generative. So that's been that's one way I'll create work is through a prompt or something. And so and prompts can be good because
Sometimes they'll just get me thinking in ways that I wouldn't necessarily think on my own. And so that can be one good way. Another way is just if I'm reading something and a line pops out at me, or you know, if I'm reading a certain poet, Wanda Coleman or Tony Hoagland or someone, and I was just like, wow, I really love that poem. I wanna, I wanna write my own take.
on a poem like that. And so I may be inspired that way. I may hear a piece of conversation out on the street, just a little piece of something. It's like, that would be a funny poem, or ooh, that I could use that as a title for something. And you know, I have it's not right in front of me at the moment, but I carry, you know, a journal with me at all times and I've filled up so many of them. So I'm always writing in my journal, pulling out my journal, taking notes.
And or you know, sometimes something will just bing come into my head, and it's like, ooh, I don't know where, you know, that just came from sort of the divine, thank you very much. I'll I'll run with that. And so it can come different ways. now sometimes I'll write something and it'll be like, this is a poem for the page. I I don't think this is a really performance piece.
And sometimes I'll write something, it's like, this would be a great performance piece. I don't know how it would look on the page. I'm gonna just maybe focus on this perfor for performance, or maybe, and then there's that happy medium where it kind of does the work for both. It's a performance piece, but also it's like, hey, it looks pretty good on the page, too. So once I figure out the poem I'm gonna perform, I basically
get a recording of myself doing the poem and then I I go for walks. I memorize a lot better if I'm walking. Sometimes when I'm driving, because in LA we spend so much time in our cars. I can
Scott (31:47)
Right.
Rich (31:47)
also do it when I'm driving. But I do it really I get a lot of the work done when I'm out for walks. And I'll just chunk the poem. I'll take pieces of it and I'll just repeat, repeat, repeat.
And once I kind of get that down, I'll go to the next part, get that chunk, put the chunks together, and then basically I'm just sort of building the poem into my memory. And then it's just a matter of time of just living with it until
it it kind of becomes conversational and really after that it takes a performance or two of doing the poem and once I've kind of done it once or twice live then it sort of starts becoming more a part of me and
As I alluded to earlier, as I mentioned earlier, I'll I'll I'll assign like if it's an especially long piece, I'll assign certain physical gestures or maybe an image in my brain to kind of associate with a certain part of the poem because it's like, ooh, this is a pretty dense part of the piece. I'm gonna need some sort of trigger
to get me into that part of the piece. again, this is again where the piece becomes embodied because when I start bringing different aspects of the body into the piece to help me memorize the piece, that is another way that.
The piece becomes living inside of me and living inside
Scott (33:31)
Hmm.
Rich (33:32)
of my body.
Scott (33:34)
Do you have a, what's your routine for actually getting to performance? Do you have a dry run with a small audience or with your wife or in front of a mirror? How
do you, how do you prep?
Rich (33:45)
Well, sometimes
it's funny, sometimes I'll be more nervous to do a poem in front of her than I will in front of an audience. Sometimes if it's like a brand new piece, I may have her it's like, Hey, you know, what do you think of this piece? And she encourages me to do so. She's like, Hey, you know, if you want to run anything by me. And so sometimes I'll run a piece by her and she's really good with offering directions, you know, because she's done a lot
Theater work and written plays and directed. So she's really good with offering direction. So sometimes I'll do that. Otherwise, it's just either me going through the piece myself or just getting up on stage and and doing it and you know, hoping it goes well.
Scott (34:36)
When you memorize your poetry, Rich, do you allow yourself to improvise? Or is that something that you stay away from? Does that factor into your work?
Rich (34:50)
Yeah. No. Yeah, and and some
t I mean not improv not improvise too much, but I I have left room for improvisation at times. And improvisation is also one of the tricks that I'll kind of use to get me like if I've gotten a little sidetracked doing a poem live.
And I need to find my way back into the piece, I'll have moments where I maybe just kind of riff or do a little bit of improv, seeing that, like, yeah, I've got to get from point A back to point C. So I'm gonna have this moment B of some improv,
I'm gonna get back to this other point C where where I need to be. So yeah, it's interesting because I've I've worked so much on embodying these pieces, sometimes, people will come up to me after a show and say, were you just like riffing up there? Were you just like talking off the top of your head?
And it's like, and I like that. I mean, when when someone does that, it it I like that it just comes off effortlessly and
they interpret it as, wow, that guy just seems like he's riffing off the top of his head. It's like, I mean, I wish I could do that. I wish I could just say these things and riff them off at the top of my head. But it's it's taken a lot of work. You know, it's like again bringing it back to music, it's like
a band that I used to really like, the Replacements. you know, they would just sometimes
get up there and just like sloppy, just but they would get through these songs and there was just this looseness, but also just this drive. But and and there was a
an interview or something with Paul Westerberg that I had read where he was basically saying something like, Yeah, you know, with that looseness, it it comes from just so many hours of just practicing as a band
Scott (36:56)
Yeah.
Rich (36:56)
to where we just knew the song so well we could just kind of let them go and they would just be what they were going to be on stage. and so that's kind of like
How I like to think of some of the work that I perform that when I get up on stage, it's just my chance to just like, boom, just let it go and let it be what it's gonna be. And it's gonna be and you know, no poem is performed the same way twice and and that's a beauty
Scott (37:24)
Right.
Rich (37:24)
of it too. It it just every moment is unique in and of itself.
Scott (37:29)
Mm-hmm.
When you're writing a poem, Rich, or when it's coming to you through these ways that you talked about, you're a drummer, you work with Butch, you do your own drumming, right? This is a piece of you, right? A piece of who you are. Do you hear rhythm as you're beginning to put a poem together? Is there, does cadence... When does cadence begin to matter?
Rich (37:54)
That that's a really good question. Cadence comes in very early on in the process, and each poem definitely has its own cadence. And actually, and I'm glad this came up, actually it's that cadence and musicality which will serve as an editing tool, because
Scott (38:21)
Mm.
Rich (38:22)
once
I've written the poem, I start speaking it, and the poem starts to develop its own cadence. I then use that the cadence, the rhythm, the beat as as an editor to to further sharpen
Scott (38:40)
Mm.
Rich (38:40)
the piece and the way it's delivered. And what'll happen is once I've landed on that cadence and I start doing the piece, if there are moments where I stumble.
I stumble out of the cadence, I trip. I'll be like, no, I've and sometimes it'll just be a matter of like taking out a word, like one word. Or it it could be from that granular type of editing to I'll do a I'll I'll especially if it's a longer piece, I'm doing a certain part of the piece, and part of it just doesn't have that musicality, and it's like
And then it'll say, Well, do I really need that part of the piece? Is it really serving a function? And if it's not, and if it's not singing, if it doesn't have that rhythm, that voice, that music, it's just like take it out. So yeah, music, rhythm is really important. It comes in very early on, and it's it's a great editing tool. And and I highly encourage people to
just speak your work out loud, to record yourself doing your work, to listen back to it, to kind of remove your like one step removed from your work, to listen to a recording of you doing the work. So you can kind of just step outside yourself and saying, is that does that really have the music that I want? And if not, you know, reshape it and and then further tune it to your ear.
Scott (40:10)
When I write rich, I sometimes find that I get married to some phrases and ultimately I know that they don't belong, but I'm so married to them. It's like taking a child out of my life, right? And getting rid of it.
Rich (40:26)
Mm-hmm.
Scott (40:28)
To edit that out is like, I've got to save that for, it's so wonderful. Pardon me, but it's so wonderful that it's got to be
Rich (40:36)
yeah.
Scott (40:36)
used somewhere.
So when you edit, when you come across a line that doesn't have the cadence, that the rhythm is not right, does it take a piece of you away to pull it out? How do you feel about editing
Rich (40:48)
Yeah, yeah.
Scott (40:49)
yourself?
Rich (40:49)
I I yeah, I I and I think it I think I've gotten better about that over the years. I I definitely think there was a period where it's just, you know, killing your darlings and all that. It's it's and it can be really hard. You know, it's like,
Scott (41:08)
Right.
Rich (41:08)
but I love that. But yeah, it's a great line, but is it like is it serving the piece? Is it serving
the overall piece. And, you know, and and I, you know, like I said, I I carry a writing journal. I'm always writing stuff down. And sometimes I'll I'll recycle a line. You know, I'll I'll repurpose it. I'll use it in another piece. I'll figure out another way to use it. So it may show up in something later down the line. It may just not show up a show up in anything. And it's just like
That pains me so much. It was such a great line, but I just don't know what to do with it right now. But but yeah, it's it's really difficult. But it's it's kind of like the whole thing with just like stripping down the ego. Cause you know, it is part of our ego, those lines, and it's like, I love that. But it's like, let it go, let it go, let it go.
Scott (42:08)
Back to the Beat
ethos right?
The Buddhism thing was very important and being aware and being unattached. I find it very hard to detach myself from some of my own creations,
Rich (42:19)
Yeah.
Scott (42:20)
which is terrible. It's an ego driven thing. And I work daily to get over that, but it's, I think it's a very hard place to be.
Rich (42:26)
Yeah, I I wrote a novel, New Jersey Me, and I was in a to help me write that novel, I was in a writing group, a novel writing group for a number of years with this tremendous teacher, Sid Stiebel, and he taught at USC here for a number of years and did a lot of screenplay work and all kinds of stuff. But but Sid was a a great teacher.
And and writing a novel was a really difficult I mean, novel writing did not come easy for me. And I have a number of friends that are that are novel writers. Brad Listey, who has a podcast here in LA, other people that's been going on for a number of years. He created a site called The Nervous Breakdown a number of years ago. And I was one of the original writers. So I have all these friends that have written novels.
And I was like, ooh, I want to do that too. I don't want to just be a poet. I want to be a novelist and I want to write my own novel. And so you know, I've been writing all this poetry and this love of language and being like you were saying, you know, just being dazzled by words and dazzled by phrases and the fireworks of language. And then getting in this novel writing group with Sid and and now trying to.
use language to tell a story, a long-form story. And there would be times where I would have a chapter and I would take it into group with Sid. And you know, he'd be like, Ferguson, the fireworks, you know, and he's like talking about the language and stuff. He's like, where's the story? You know, and it's like,
Scott (44:13)
you
Rich (44:15)
but Sid, I love that line. He was like, it's not serving the story. It's like, okay. So really with Sid, it was like,
It was, you know, it was it was a crash course and like killing your darlings left and right. But it it made a better it made a better novel. You know, when I could when I could get out of my own way. It's like get out of your way. Like don't
Scott (44:39)
Thank you.
Rich (44:39)
don't let all the words, don't let all the fireworks and everything. just clear all that stuff out, get out of your own way and tell a story.
Scott (44:48)
Any interest for you in going back to novel writing or are you happy where you are with poetry?
Rich (44:54)
Well, I'm happy where I
am with that particular novel, New Jersey Me, I really felt it was a story that needed to be told. It was literally like inside of me. And it was like, this story needs to be told.
There there's not a novel in me right now that has that same drive like New Jersey Me did. I I think about the form quite a bit and some of my poetry is narrative poetry. So I do like the form, but it's a lot of work and I really admire novelists,
And I know there's there's so much that goes into it and I know they work really hard. But it it was it was a lot of work for me and I right now I'm with poetry, there's a quicker turnaround. I can I can
Scott (45:41)
Mm.
Rich (45:41)
turn a poem around quicker. So we'll see. I'm open to the idea, but it's like not really speaking to me at the moment.
Scott (45:51)
Was that, was the novel auto fiction? Was it sort of memoirish? New Jersey Me sounds like it's about you in a sense.
Rich (46:01)
Well, yeah, what okay, this is interesting. So I when I lived in Jersey, I lived in this really small town and I wanted to eventually get out of this town, which I did after I, you know, graduated high school and I finished college in New Jersey. I just wanted to make a beeline out of this town and get to California. It's kind of that like that
There was this Nicholas Cage movie some years ago, Red Rock West, where he's he's in this little Po Dunk town and he just keeps trying to get out of town. And every moment he gets really close to getting out of town, something drags him back in. And the film is just like him just trying to get out of this town. And I kind of use models like that for the the the novel where it was just like this character.
Who was loosely inspired, loosely inspired by my own life, but more about the the sentiments, the emotion of my life at that time, wanting to get out. Cause when I first tried writing the novel, I tried basing it a lot on actual experiences that I had. And I kept getting tripped up, like, but the moment didn't go exactly. I need to make it go.
And I I found that basing it like a writing it as like a memoir or memoir like I I kept getting tripped up on like but the moment didn't go exactly like that. Well, okay, just let all that go. What did it feel like? What did it feel like of you being in a town that you just needed to get out of? And once I could attach.
The writing more to the emotions of what I felt in the immediacy, and let my imagination do more of the work rather than relying so much on specifics. Once I just let the imagination play and combine the imagination with the emotional experience, that's what propelled me into the book and made it so much easier to write.
Scott (48:20)
Is it similar with your poetry, Rich? Do you, when you write poems, are you sort of abstracting the specifics, but bringing in the imagination and the emotion that you want to capture and pulling some of it from real life and putting that into your poetry?
Rich (48:37)
Yes, it's kind of a a layering and a combination of of all those things.
so I mentioned Eric Morago earlier and the the workshop that I've been to with him and how some of the prompts he's been giving have have helped me to generate new work. And this last this last weekend, the prompt that he gave us was this Tony Hoagland poem.
called Dickhead, where basically Tony took a word from his childhood, from like going through puberty, becoming in the world like becoming a man, like in the world of boys, becoming a man. And he used this word dickhead to kind of serve as a vehicle to not only show like, hey, this is one of the first kind of
Dirty words that I learned when I was younger, and how it affected me that way. But also, this is how this word kind of served as a vehicle to take me through this very, really important part of my life that took me from a boy into manhood. So that was kind of the prompt that Eric gave: like, use this poem, call upon like one of the first dirty words that you remember, and
use it as a vehicle to kind of show how that kind of informed you at a certain part of your life. And I I was thinking back to all the words that I had learned and and I, you know, and I was New Jersey and I was like, what was a word that I used a lot in Jersey when I was like in junior high high school? And I was like, yeah, jerk off. And it's like, yeah, jerk. Because that was a that was a funny word because it
It was sort of a dirty word, but but like it jerk off was like you were dissing somebody, but it was just like, come on, stop being such a clown. It was also, you know, it was kind of a multi-purpose word. but but it was also one of the words for me that was one of those bridge words that that took me from adolescence, you know, in
through puberty into manhood and all that s sort of thing. then within the body of that poem, I was able to not only incorporate memory, imagination, but also kind of just wordplay and rhythm. And so
that was kind of a recent poem where I was able to really bring in a lot of those elements and kind of weave them together to to create a poem.
and then I've got a few pieces where I
write about Los Angeles. And
Scott (51:35)
Mm.
Rich (51:35)
so if I'm doing a piece like that, like one of my most recent pieces is Live and Die in LA. So basically, with a poem like that, the idea that I came up with was
no matter where you live, what if you've been there so long that that, you know, through this sort of process of osmosis or whatever, you just start absorbing all the elements of that place and you sort
Scott (52:02)
Hmm.
Rich (52:03)
of embody that
place, you become that place. So I I was really enamored with that idea of becoming the place where you are. It's past, it's present. And so I I just started doing a bunch of research about LA, And it's and then
becomes the you know editing processes like, my goodness, what am I gonna do with all this? And then it was just, you know, writing these passages, which I thought were really cool. And then but still it's just pages long. And then it's like, well, I'm not gonna memorize all this.
So, you know, there are some pieces that I write that just r require a lot of research.
and all that sort of stuff. So any poems that
Scott (52:49)
Yeah.
Rich (52:50)
I have to that I'm writing, working on that require any kind of research, that's actually kind of fun.
Scott (52:55)
I think for me, listening to musicians and poets who do like you say, who embody the place where they are and where they have been, really, I think it helps them achieve something, I would say spectacular, right? I'm thinking specifically of Tom Waits and you can't have Tom Waits without LA, right? And
Rich (53:15)
Yeah.
Scott (53:19)
his evocation of the city is so rich, but it's not just him.
San Francisco and Houston and New York, obviously, Chicago, but telling those stories and the people who inhabit those stories in those places, I think is such a powerful way of talking about whatever your medium, whether it's music or novel or poetry or whatever, I'm thinking also of Saul Bellow, right? Chicago pops when you read Saul
Rich (53:47)
yeah.
Scott (53:48)
Bellow. You are in Chicago in that neighborhood with those people standing on the corner talking about,
everything, right? It's wonderful. so I can't wait to read what you've done with LA,
Rich.
Rich (53:59)
But yeah, I I would love to do the LA piece if if you're cool with that.
Scott (54:03)
Are you ready to go?
Rich (54:05)
Yeah.
Scott (54:06)
Rich, man, give it to me. I'd love it.
Rich (54:08)
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So it's called Live and Die in LA.
Scott (54:12)
All right.
Rich (54:15)
I'm born from Tongva plant medicine, ayahuasca and psilocybin and powered sound bath ceremonies, the amped-up grit and glitz of the Sunset Strip from the living electricity of Jim Morrison at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go to River Phoenix's deep dive into overdose at the Viper Room. My bones had been broken by car crashes, Starwood punk rock mosh pits in the nineteen forty-three Zoot Suit riots.
My skin is flush with bits of shells, tiles, soda bottles, mirrors and shards of pottery embedded in the Watts Tower's spires. I'm earthquake and handshake, heartbreak in that big break. My veins move through me like Laurel Canyon's Paisley bricked and Bougainville line road running from sunset to the valley, reverberating song cycles of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Built by this city, blood and breath of this city, live and die in LA. My DNA luxuriates in cryofacial thermal shock float tank bliss imprinted with moon juice super you, the tragedy and tears of the Cecil Hotel, the bebop rapture of Louis Armstrong at the Cotton Club, and that moment of genius when Mingus decided to drop the cello and take up the bass.
I'm wildfires and Richard Pryor free basing, ketamine therapy and colorful sneakers, Malibu Beaches, Melrose Boutiques, Retro Glamour meets modern edge, fusion cuisine, and Lincoln Heights Latino history. I'm the Runyon Buddha, Angels Flight and Biddy Mason's Free Papers, Little Persia to Panorama City, Baldwin Hills to Boyle Heights at Florence and Normandy.
I gather bruises, cinder blocks, beer bottles, transform them into sustainable jewelry of healing gestures, built by this city, blood and breath of this city, live and die in LA. I'm DTLA, young moneyed hipsters in the aging homeless, wild gardening and antidepressant interior decorating, radio head supersonic soaring the bowl Miles Davis grounded at
LAX for drug possession. I'm 27th Street Bakery, sweet potato pie, sweat and panic and angular sunglasses, trying to look more movie star than maniac. A down and out angel released from men's central jail now, doing double shifts at the feather factory to earn new wings. I am street gangs and street racing the romp and stomp of the Silver Lake Dog Park. My heart is always open like Cantor's Deli.
I've been healed by Phil Spector's wall of sound, and broken by his wall of guns. Built by this city, blood and breath of this city, live and die in LA. I cruise the airwaves like Rodney on the rock, old school cool like the Rat Pack, and Musso and Frank. I'm Alice and Felix back on track.
Ice baths and espresso bookstores and power yoga, rising rents and unaffordable housing, striking actors, writers, musicians. I'm Fernando Mania and Dodger, Southpaw, Clayton Kershaw, striking out batters, panting pit bulls, police reports, archive, deep cuts, knife cuts, and all kinds of cults. I am promising as an Echo Park Lake Sunrise, durable as Buster Keaton's star on the boulevard, lasting.
As the psychic wounds reverberating from Japanese internment camps, I am the road leading from Hollywood Forever Cemetery and its celebrated dead whose ghostly inflections are used as our otherworldly driving directions. Built by this city, blood and breath of this city, live and die in LA. Built by this city, blood and breath of this city.
Live and die in LA.
Scott (58:30)
That's a powerful poem, Rich. I mean,
Rich (58:33)
Thanks.
Scott (58:34)
you've obviously done your research. There are things in there that over the course of my life have meant so much to me. Mingus, Pryor, the zoot suitors. It's evocative in so many ways. think that's fucking hands down. That's amazing.
Rich (58:54)
Yeah, thank you.
Scott (58:55)
How do you feel about it?
Rich (58:58)
I love it. I love, you know, and I I think one of the reasons I really love it, and I and I really love the pieces that I've written about LA is because when I first came here from San Francisco years ago, I told myself I would give LA a year. And I lasted nine months. I hated it so much, I bought a one-way ticket to London. I was like, forget this. I'm gonna go to London and start a band over there. And and ended up
Going to London and coming back and spending a little time in the village in New York City, played with some guys in the basement of a funeral parlor in the village and all kinds of good fun, but then realized, you know what, I need to go back to LA and give it another shot. I don't think I gave it a enough of a chance. I need to take my tail out from between my legs and and go back and give it more of a fighting chance.
And I came back out here and I just I adjusted my attitude.
and a friend of mine kept saying here in LA, you gotta have a sense of humor about LA. And I just I didn't have that sense of humor. It's just I was taking everything too seriously. And when I came back the second time, I just I had a complete
Attitude adjustment. And I've been here ever since. So you ask me what I think of this piece. I I really like this piece for a number of reasons. But one of the big reasons is that it reflects how I've really grown so to love this city and how much.
Scott (1:00:37)
Mm
Rich (1:00:40)
how much I am a part of this city and I I love all the people here. You know, it
And it's it's taken time, it's taken years, but man, you know, when you when you meet people like Butch, when meet all these great people that I've I've just come to know and love,
There are so many amazingly talented
Scott (1:00:58)
Mm
Rich (1:00:59)
people here in LA. And the and the and they just walk amongst us, you know, and it's just
like they're all over the place. It's just but you gotta put in the time to meet these people and and do the work. And so I feel very blessed that, you know, I can call this city not only my home, but also a place where I've just developed so many
amazing relationships and have the good fortune to to know and work with so many fiercely talented people and really good hearted people too.
Scott (1:01:32)
I think there's a definite love letter vibe to that poem, a love letter to
Rich (1:01:36)
Mm-hmm.
Scott (1:01:37)
LA, it comes through. And I want to say, Rich, think you need to, maybe you're humbler than I am, but I think you need to count yourself among the fabulously talented people of LA.
Rich (1:01:51)
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott (1:01:54)
How long have you went
after that return to LA? How long was it after you were there that you met Butch?
Rich (1:02:00)
Ooh, good question.
Probably about four or five years. Within four or
Scott (1:02:04)
Mm.
Rich (1:02:05)
five and and how I met Butch was at this little theater in Silver Lake and some friends of mine.
owned this theater and they were doing a production and Butch got up and he did this solo drumming thing where it just was like, who is this guy? You know, and he's amazingly creative.
he just always brings so much creativity into it. And I saw this guy and I was just like, man, I've got I've got to meet this guy. I've got to work with this guy. And so it was like after he performed, I just went up to him and I introduced myself and I was just like, I would love to work with you. And it's we've been doing stuff off and on ever since.
Scott (1:02:48)
will he support you on To Live and Die in LA in any of your performances?
Rich (1:02:52)
Yeah, absolutely.
I want to get back into the studio and do another version of Live and Die in L A, a little bit more upbeat, a little bit more kind of just propulsive, a little bit more dynamic. if we do that, Butch may come in and depending on his schedule and and
Do some drumming for that. So yeah.
Scott (1:03:13)
Cool. You guys have a definite, I would say kind of a soul craft, right? You draw me in when you guys work together. It's just amazing. So I can't wait to hear what's next.
Rich (1:03:23)
Yeah, and there's the the documentary. I w I wanna give a shout out to Zayd Nakib.
Scott (1:03:28)
and
Rich (1:03:29)
He did a a mini documentary about my work, but also how the importance of poetry, community, and collaboration. a documentary called Speak, and he's submitting it for film festivals now. But yeah, some of that the documentary also features
some work that Butch and I have done together, a piece called Rock of Ages, and it also features some different LA poets here whom I admire and and and Beyond Baroque, Beyond Baroque is also featured in the film. And also just how important community is.
you know, as I get older and I'm I'm here in LA amongst such a rich and vibrant poetry community.
Part
of that is is, you know, collective voice, community and the importance of community. And so I'm I'm a real big supporter of community and Zayd's documentary, Speak, was also trying to highlight how I value community and and the poetry community that I'm a part of here in LA.
Scott (1:04:40)
It makes me want to to hear about two more things specifically. One is your, the time you spent as poet laureate, beat poet laureate, one thing, but also how COVID impacted you in the sense of not having community or not having the same access to community for some period of time.
Rich (1:05:03)
Yeah, well it's interesting that you bring that up because that's where this came in. So with the California Beat Poet Laureate, that pretty much was given to me like 20... 2020 to 2022, like right smack
Scott (1:05:22)
Mm.
Rich (1:05:23)
dab in the COVID season. So it was like, thank you for this award, which I can do very little with, but you know, thank you, Debbie and
Paul and you know, National Beat Poet Foundation, you know, it was and I was very grateful and it's very cool experience. But I I there wasn't really nothing I could do with the award. Everyone was sitting at home on Zoom and you know, putting together some Zoom poetry readings, but it was just like that kind of got a little bit old after a while.
And so that was really where, you know, the idea for Beat Not Beat came together because I was like, I want to do something to bring the poetry community, together. Can't really go out and do it in live readings or anything, but I but I want to document this period.
eventually stumbled upon the idea of Beat Not Beat, and then got the editorial team together with S.A., Kim, and Alexis, and then just started reaching out to all these poets. So even though we were in a time of COVID, it really did feel like
I was doing something and we were doing something to bring
Scott (1:06:39)
Mm.
Rich (1:06:39)
all these poets together. So yeah, that was how I spent my COVID vacation. That was yeah, that was that was pretty much, you know, how I spent that time. And it was, it was time well spent.
Scott (1:06:54)
I congratulations for doing something that productive at a moment when, I mean, everything was falling apart basically, right? So that's kudos
Rich (1:07:02)
Yeah.
Scott (1:07:02)
to you for getting that done. And it's a great book. think it,
Rich (1:07:05)
Yeah, really proud of it.
Scott (1:07:08)
you should be, yeah. what I've read is just stunning, all of it.
Rich (1:07:12)
Yeah,
when SA and I were editing the book, we basically had
Printed out all the pages and basically spread it out on the floor And then SA would come over and we would just by hand put the pages in. And SA turned me on to a to a really cool way of editing where he was like, okay, let's start with the center of the book. And we knew we wanted to.
to have Wanda Coleman be at the center of the book, at the heart of the book, because I really admire her work. And when I think of LA poetry, she's one of the premier poets that I think of So I wanted her to sort of be the heart of the book, the center of the book. And then SA was like, then we once we know what the center of the book is, we radiate out and then we edit to the front and back of the book.
Scott (1:08:05)
That's like a process of discovery, right? Editing brings
Rich (1:08:08)
yeah.
Scott (1:08:09)
you new insights into all the work that you've put together to create this book. I think that's a wonderful part of the process, right? You guys clearly had fun.
Rich (1:08:17)
Yeah, and it
Yeah, and it's you know, and it's kinda like, you know, Poet Film Stage in that way where depending on where you place one piece, it helps to inform another piece. And a poem that might read one certain way, if you put this poem in front of it and this poem after it, it like it suddenly reads in this whole brand new way. And it's like, Wow, now this poem suddenly has so much more meaning when
you put it in context of putting it in conversation with this poem in front of it and this poem after it, and then you think of, you know, the grander arc of all these poems together, but
It matters.
Scott (1:08:57)
Anything that you want to say before we wrap up, Rich?
Rich (1:09:01)
just that Poet Film Stage featuring Butch Norton doing drumming. So if you want to see some amazing drum work, you know, come for the poetry, stay for the drumming, or come for the drumming, stay for the poetry. It's gonna be October Friday, October 23rd at Beyond Baroque here in Los Angeles in lovely Venice, California. And
I mean, as far as books go, there's Beat Not Beat,
Scott (1:09:29)
you
Rich (1:09:30)
there's Somewhere a Playground. I've got all right here. Everything is Radiant Between the Hates And then my very first book, shout out to Iris Berry and A Razor at Punk Hostage Press. They were nice enough. My very first book, which Eighth & Agony, which has a foreword by Bob Holman. Yeah, Bob Holman. So
Scott (1:09:50)
Great stuff.
Rich (1:09:51)
yeah. And then, you know, I'm
I have a YouTube channel with my spoken word poetry, but just make sure you get Rich Ferguson poet, not Rich Ferguson magician. He is very good, but we are two different people. There was this, we I did have some name competition. There was there was a period where it was Rich Ferguson, me, Rich Ferguson magician, and then there was this cross dresser in London, Rich Ferguson over there. So it was this
trio of Rich Fergusons. I haven't heard much from him these days. So mostly it's just Rich Ferguson poet, Rich Ferguson magician.
Scott (1:10:29)
Cool. Thanks, Rich. I really appreciate you being here today. This has been, I'm in awe of you and the work that you do and everything that I've seen that you've produced. I love it. So thank you very much for being here.
Rich (1:10:40)
Thank you so much, Scott. It's great. Yeah, Butch sang your praises and so I d I felt like, Well, I gotta meet this Scott guy. He sounds pretty amazing. So thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Scott (1:10:52)
I gotta
tell you, I can't get enough of Butch either. So yeah, I'm hoping to have him back on as well. Maybe you guys can come and do something together. We should think about that.
Rich (1:11:00)
that would be fun. That would be great. I would love that.
Scott (1:11:03)
Cool. All right. Well, more to come on that, Rich. Thanks very much.
Rich (1:11:07)
Thank you.
Scott Catey (1:11:09)
And thank you for listening. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd invite you to continue exploring it. Visit thesumofallwisdom.com for show notes, essays, transcripts, field notes, and our listening rooms, where each conversation becomes part of a larger archive of musical craft and creative wisdom.
Scott Catey (1:11:54)
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, following the show, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who loves music and the people who make it. For now, I'm Scott Catey. Remember to stay curious. See you next time.