Interview: “Gagaku Meat” Author Mike Daily

One of the most enjoyable parts about maintaining this blog has been the chance to discover not only local writers, but also the authors and/or poets who have influenced them in some way.  It’s a great way to get introduced to the wider literary world that exists beyond one’s current understanding.  This was the case when I received an email from local novelist, poet, and recording artist, Mike Daily.  He was looking to promote this Thursday’s “Evening of Music, Words, and Glitch,” and wondered if I would be open to giving it a mention on the site.  Possibly as a means to entice me, which in the end wasn’t necessary, he offered to send along a couple copies of Gagaku Meat: The Steve Richmond Story, his profile of the poet which originally appeared this past March as the centerpiece for Buk Scene 1, a Charles Bukowski-inspired magazine printed in Montreal, Canada; distributed in Holland.  Daily has since re-published it as a small press zine, which you can order off of his website.

Steve Richmond is a complex and sordid character.  One who could just as easily be the creation of a great work of fiction.  Many terms could be used to describe Richmond, but the one that he should be remembered for is the simplest.  A poet, as this is what has remained constant in his life through all of the ups and downs.  And this is what Daily, to his credit, largely focuses on in Gagaku Meat.  Sure he talks about the drugs, the blown money, and Richmond’s incessant infatuation with Bukowski, but primarily as they relate to the work these struggles have inspired.

The strongest part of Gagaku Meat, was Daily’s inclusion of his own experiences with Richmond and his poetry.  They provide a contextual depth to the piece, which allows the reader to become more comfortable with this troubled character.  Through this telling, you also get an understanding for why Daily would feel compelled to profile Richmond, and why he would create the psychedelic rock show that is Mr. Viced Honest (an anagram for Steve Richmond).

There are times when the reader gets somewhat lost as Daily tries to relate certain Richmond publications to the people he interviewed for the piece, but I think this is largely due to the volume of work Richmond has produced more so than any navigational errors on Daily’s part.  In the end, Gagaku Meat accomplishes what any great biography should.  Daily has collected and presented the information available on Richmond’s story, while simultaneously provoking the reader to want to learn more about this influential and yet largely unknown poet.

Upon reading Gagaku Meat, I sent a few questions to Daily via email.  Here are his responses:

1) You mentioned there were some updates since Gagaku Meat came out. Can you enlighten us?

Gagaku Meat came out in March ’09 as the centerpiece for Buk Scene 1, a Charles Bukowski-inspired magazine printed in Montreal, Canada; distributed in Holland. The story is now available as a small press zine, so more people can have the chance to read it (it’s not available online). On September 8, 2008, shortly after I started working on Gagaku Meat, I emailed Steve Richmond and he responded: “Mike, absolute truth is my eyesight so fucked now by cataracts I simply can’t read screen—so please write me if you wish—” He gave me his Venice, CA, address, and we corresponded by mail as we had 15 years ago when I was one of his small press publishers living in Southern California. I had printed 33 of his poems in my STOVEPiPER anthology in ’94. The following year, however, we had a “falling out” and I aborted plans to publish his written recollection of having known Jim Morrison. The Door of Doors was to include two dozen prose chapters mixed with original poems and rare photos. Our “falling out” is detailed in Gagaku Meat.

Richmond is 69 years old. He is no longer able to use typewriters or computers because both of his eyes are affected by cataracts. He now writes in large print with a depleted black marker on spiral-bound notebook paper. He says he’s “retired” from writing but still submits poetry when asked. Dwang 1 from the U.K. printed six of Richmond’s recent poems. I’ve always associated Steve Richmond with typewriters–or “typers,” as he often referred to them, echoing Bukowski’s coining of the term–so Richmond’s departure from being such a prolific typist of poems/personal letters has had the biggest impact on me as his friend and long-time fan.

You can read all six pages of Steve Richmond’s April 12, 2009, letter to me (after Gagaku Meat came out) in this video I made.

Steve Richmond most recently sent me a letter on June 1, 2009, which stated, in part: “About 10 days ago / I put my magnifying / glass to that / last ‘period’ in / GAGAKU MEAT / and I noted for / 1st time it was / back cover of / EARTH ROSE book = / A STROKE OF / GENIUS / on your part.” I laughed. That’s exactly how I would start a documentary about Steve Richmond, if I was making one. The opening scene would show Richmond using his magnifying glass to read Gagaku Meat. It would cut to a close-up of his blinking eye as seen through the magnifying glass, then show an enlarged view of the demon that we used as the “bullet” for the end of Gagaku Meat, pulled from the back cover of Richmond’s Wormwood Review Award-winning poetry book, Earth Rose (1974).

2) What, if anything, can be learned from Steve Richmond’s story?

If anything, endurance is more important than truth. “Endurance is more important than truth” is a statement that Richmond much enjoyed discussing with Bukowski, whom he greatly admired. The work–the poetry on the page–was what mattered most. The back cover of Richmond’s self-published Poetry/ Towards a Creative Nonviolent Anarchy (1969) proclaimed, “FAME IS PUKE!” Bukowski, of course, went on to become internationally famous with books published by Black Sparrow Press, Essex House and City Lights, while Richmond remained an underground cult figure holed up in his “shack by th’sea” in Santa Monica, CA, typewriting staggered-line poetry that made immediate addicts of many readers within the littlemag scene. While I was researching for Gagaku Meat, poet and indie bookseller Cheryl A Townsend wrote, “Once I turned people on to Steve, they always came back looking for more.” Both Richmond and Bukowski constantly strove for honesty, spontaneity, lyricism in their writings. Simplicity. “Meat poetry” is the tag some placed on their free verse styles, a categorization that has also been applied to the work of late poets d. a. levy and William Wantling. Steve Richmond is still alive, after 40+ years of heavy drug use. That’s some serious endurance.

3) It seems like you went to a lot of effort to track down people who had interacted with Steve at different periods of his life, did the responses you received alter any initial understanding you had of who Steve was?

“Manic,” is how Jan Hallers, Co-Editor of Buk Scene, described my investigative efforts for Gagaku Meat. It was rather manic. Ben Pleasants was initially very helpful in getting me in contact with Richmond, and with Richmond’s long-time friend, abstract artist David Garcia. Garcia contributed keen insights that couldn’t have come from anyone else. Ditto for graphic artist Al Berlinski, publisher of Sun Dog Press, which released Richmond’s Santa Monica Poems (1987), 5.0L Poems (1991), a re-issue of Hitler Painted Roses with Bukowski’s original ’66 foreword (1994), and Richmond’s impressionistic bio-memoir, Spinning Off Bukowski (1996).

I discovered I was not the only publisher to have had differences with Richmond. One poet had to back out of a book contract with Richmond in the late ’80s and received an answering machine message demanding the return of everything Richmond had ever mailed–manuscripts, letters, chapbooks, everything. Richmond was eccentric, I heard, unstable due to the drugs and difficult to deal with at times. For those unfamiliar with the story, Richmond’s instability spiked in the late ’90s after he sold the property upon which his small house had stood, bought a 5,000-square-foot home with a swimming pool in the hills, purchased sports cars and a limousine, hired a personal chauffeur, got involved in high-stakes gambling (poker), and continued to overindulge in substances. By all accounts, he had stopped writing. Less than three years later, Richmond had lost all of his possessions except what could fit into two garbage bags. Most disconcerting were reports of the complete loss of his manuscripts, unpublished poems and book collection. Trashed. This wasn’t the Steve Richmond I knew, or had ever imagined.

4) Are there any contemporary poets that you feel are carrying on the tradition of Buk and Richmond?

Good question. A.D. Winans, who published Richmond’s classic pocket-sized poetry book Wild Seed (1977), is still cranking out compressed, lyrically charged poems. Neeli Cherkovski, whose poem about Richmond, “You Were Angry,” was printed for the first time in Gagaku Meat, is closer to Bukowski, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in form. Cherkovski and Richmond are less than kindred spirits, it will suffice to say, even though they were well-acquainted through Bukowski. There is no one like Richmond, but one can see similarities in his contemporary poets Todd Moore, Phil Weidman, David Barker, Fred Voss and Mark Weber. There is a young poet thought by some to be “The New Bukowski.” His name is Justin Hyde. I appreciate that Hyde is not aping Bukowski–his poems are genuine and unique. S.A. Griffin wrote the Introduction to his Jack Micheline Memorial Poetry Award-winning book, Down Where the Hummingbird Goes to Die.

5) Tell us about the event you are hosting coming up July 9th?

“Music, Words & Glitch” may become an annual event, but first things first. Anyone in the Pacific Northwest with interest in experimental music, hip-hop, turntablism, grimey dance, tape loops, country rock, psychedelic and/or spoken words is urged to come out to The Tonic Lounge this Thursday evening for a fun, mind-bending night.

Mike Daily writes a poem a day at mrvicedhonest.wordpress.com as participant in theundeniables.org Writers’ Workshop Session X.  You can also check out the poetry he submit for publication on this site here.