Dick Lourie

Bio

Dick Lourie’s most recent collection (2009), If the Delta Was the Sea, was published by Hanging Loose Press. Lourie is a blues musician as well as a poet, and this book of poems about the Mississippi Delta is the result of his experiences playing music, interviewing local people, and researching history in the small Mississippi Delta city of Clarksdale, known as a center of blues music.

Denise Levertov has written that Lourie’s poetry “…never fail(s) to give me a keen sense of his integrity and individuality.” When he performed at New York City’s Poetry Project, Project director Ed Friedman wrote, “Dick Lourie rocked and charmed….His…rhythm and blues tenor sax provided a perfect counterpoint to the astute and sweet remembrances in his poems…a terrific evening.” An experienced teacher and editor, and a co-founder of New York State Poets in the Schools, he has worked with writers of all ages, and has edited four anthologies of work by high-school age writers. He is co-founder and still co-editor of Hanging Loose magazine and Hanging Loose Press, the oldest continuously publishing small press in the country, established in 1966. He does performances and workshops in high schools as well as colleges, libraries, and other venues. In performance, he mixes music with poetry, playing the sax as well as speaking his poems, accompanied by tracks from his blues and poetry CDs.