Interview with Boyd Bauman
Librarian and writer Boyd Bauman hails from Kansas. His two collections of poetry are titled ‘Cleave’ (Spartan Press, 2018) and ‘Scheherazade Plays The Chestnut Tree Cafe’ (Spartan Press, 2019). His first children’s book, ‘The Heights of Love’ was published by Meadowlark Press in 2024. He was the featured poet in the June 2026 issue of Quill & Parchment. His website is https://boydbauman.weebly.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boyd, tell us something about your background and how you first became inspired to write poetry.
I’m a farm kid who grew up five miles outside a town of 200 people. I was a “surprise child,” nine years younger than my next closest sibling. It was a great place and time to grow up, as I would ride my bike down the gravel road to a friend’s house a couple miles away, take my dog on adventures through the timber and creeks, chop thistles for a penny per thistle, and accompany my dad as he delivered bulls to local farmers. I read as a child, but we didn’t get to the library often, so most of my time was spent outdoors and inside my imagination. I learned a love of nature and respect for animals and plants, which is a great start for a poet.
You have travelled widely to places as far apart as Vietnam, Iceland and Japan. Have these travels provided you with useful material to include in your poetry collections and, if so, how do you feel that they add an extra dimension to your writing?
My folks and I did not travel widely, so I sensed I really needed to travel to continue my education after attending a small liberal arts school. (Also, I had an English degree and was not very marketable!). I became a flight attendant based in NYC for a couple years, flying to as many places in the world as I could. After being furloughed with 1,500 other flight attendants, I worked at a dude ranch in Colorado, as a ski bum in Colorado, as a fisherman and fish factory worker in Alaska, as an English teacher in Japan and then Vietnam before settling in Kansas City.
Living abroad is one of the finest educations one can receive. This perspective does inform me and my writing, I hope, as I also hope it lends me a bit of empathy and open-mindedness. Of course, some of my travel finds its way directly into some of my narrative poems, as my work on an Alaskan slime line (fish processing), adventures in Japanese hostess bars, and injuries in Vietnam are all great stories, in my opinion.
I very much enjoyed reading the poems that were selected for the Featured Poet section in the June 2026 issue of Quill & Parchment. Your memories of life in rural Kansas were, for me, both vivid and refreshingly accessible. How much importance do you place on accessibility when writing your poems?
I don’t think I’m smart enough or well-schooled in poetry enough to make my poems esoteric. I read very widely in the poetry genre, and I appreciate those brilliant ones who create a kind of performance art with their verse, but I always come back to the brilliance of those who write for the common person more, who are smart enough to put a twist of humor or insight into a story poem or a descriptive poem that can be enjoyed by a great number of people. I would like to work on honing that skill. Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, and George Bilgere are poets I keep coming back to that have fantastic senses of humor and sly and subversive wits about common things, people, and events.
In his commentary on ‘Cleave’, Kevin Rabas (a former Poet Laureate of Kansas) describes your poetry as being ‘philosophical, Beat, dense, and full of humor and voice’. Does any of this assessment surprise you? From your point of view, do any one of these ‘labels’ take preference over the others?
Kevin Rabas is a wonderful supporter of other poets in Kansas and beyond. His description is flattering, and I hope I’m developing a good voice in my poems, and I think that’s a work in progress, of course, but coming along. I wish I were better with humor, but I’m working on it. Likewise with being philosophical. I hope more of that comes with experience. As for density, I’m trying to pack more of a wallop in more brevity. I think I was too wordy in my beginnings as a poet – not uncommon for beginning poets – and am trying to better emulate those that do so much with less – less telling. I’m still learning to rely more on my readers and let them have more of a say.
On your website you say that you have always believed in community engagement and that one way in which you try to do this is through your writing. Tell us something about your work as an essayist, correspondent and newspaper columnist. What subjects are you passionate about and how do these play in to this aspect of your work?
My dream job – maybe for a next life – is to be an overseas correspondent, preferably not in a war zone – maybe more a National Geographic-type writer. I did some work for my high school and college newspapers, but I didn’t feel I had enough experience myself to offer much. The past few years I’ve given essay writing a go occasionally – particularly inspired by the prompts of Meadowlark 105 Reader, a journal of Meadowlark Press out of Emporia. I’ve been able to explore my rural roots through some of the essays. I’d love to do a book of essays at some point. Other than that, I’ve done a guest column (just once) for the Kansas City Star about Barack Obama exemplifying the Kansas values of his mother, a native of this state. Who knows what the future holds. As of now, I’m not into blogs or podcasts or social media, but I might do more of that once my nest is more empty.
Tell us a little about your work as a librarian. What kind of library do you work in? Is it a specialist library or a general library? To what extent is the library adjusting to a world where fewer and fewer people are reading books?
I’m a high school librarian at a very diverse urban Kansas City school. It’s an International Baccalaureate school that is the magnet school of the public school district. I’ve been there 10 years, and it’s a wonderful job for me. I’m constantly of use, helping students and staff, and I’d like to believe working in a high school keeps me young.
It is hard to get anyone in America to read, let alone high school students. Teenage boys are notoriously hard to reach. I remind myself that I didn’t read much in high school, as I was desperate to define myself through sports in my small town – fairly unsuccessfully, truth be told. As with teaching, one plants seeds and some take root. I enjoy putting up displays of our books that may or may not pull teenage eyes away from a phone (it’ll be interesting if more eyes are available as our state will ban cell phones during the school day next year – I'm hopeful). We have monthly book clubs, game clubs, origami club, and the occasional poetry cafe in our library. I follow my passions and hope that inspires passion in students. I also try to tap into their passions and learn new things and open myself up to their lives and interests.
I’m very fortunate that our library still has 17,000 volumes of physical books. It’s an old school and we still have non-fiction stacks in our upper library, which I adore. We are always under threat to “modernize,” i.e. give up some of our space and our collection, but I’ll battle that best I can for as long as I can.
Writing a book for children must have marked a change in direction for you as a writer. How big a challenge was the change in focus?
One of the biggest inspirations for me as a poet was attending The Key West Literary Seminar when the theme was poetry, specifically a tribute to Richard Wilbur. You won’t believe the lineup I saw from the front row: Robert Pinskey, James Tate, Rita Dove, Kay Ryan, Mark Strand, Yusef Komunyakka, Natasha Trethewey, etc. Richard Wilbur read a portion of a children’s alphabet book he’d written, and I thought, “I should try that!”
It started small, with me writing and illustrating personalized alphabet books for my two daughters, five years apart. My youngest daughter’s bedtime routine was to have me read several books to her, then she’d stall sleep by asking me to tell her stories. I made up one once about a dad who kept building a higher and higher bunk bed to please his little girl, building it all the way to the stars. I didn’t know how to write a children’s book (still don’t), but put the story in a grid as I imagined the words would look below illustrations, which I knew wouldn’t be my own, and I sent it off to a Kansas press, Meadowlark. They passed on it, saying they didn’t do children’s books, but contacted me a year later and said they were tiptoeing into the children’s book market. They passed my words to a local illustrator and we collaborated via email – we've still never met in person.
The book hasn’t sold well, but I have a few other ideas in mind – children's biographies of famous, or ought-to-be famous, local heroes. We’ll see when I sit down to tackle those projects. Poetry always takes precedence.
Are you aware of any moves in your area to encourage young children to read books again?
We have strong public library systems in our metro area, and a couple of them do wonderful things with summer reading programs. With the upcoming cell phone bans in schools next year, I’m hoping to get some teachers on board with a sustained silent reading program at my school. It will need to come from me and my co-librarian, as we’ve not had a lot of administrative support to build a culture of reading.
Aside from poetry, what books are you reading at the moment?
I always have a poetry book going, but I’ve been on a fiction kick since The New York Times came out with their top books of this century in 2025. In that spirit, I’ll give you my top fiction titles of the past decade: ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers, ‘The Book of Form and Emptiness’ by Ruth Ozeki, ‘Demon Copperhead’ by Barbara Kingsolver, ‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers, ‘James’ by Percival Everett, ‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee, ‘There Are Rivers in the Sea’ by Elif Shafak and ‘The Mighty Red’ by Louise Erdrich.
What projects are you working on now and what are your plans for the future?
I’m hoping to have a new poetry book out this year. Hard to believe it’s been seven years since my last one. I hope to just enjoy the creative process for as long as I can, improving as much as possible, getting up an hour early to sit in my grandfather’s chair at my great grandma’s desk in conversation with myself, my ancestors, and any muse that loses her way.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cowlicks
You may not believe this,
but I’ve no motive to lie,
no energy or wherewithal to craft
any persona but my given:
When I was a kid on the farm,
feeding hay to the feedlot heifers,
leaning over to break up sweet alfalfa bales,
a young cow licked me
from eyebrow to scalp.
Hardly a momentous event,
but what are the odds
of a boy being licked by a cow
directly upon one of his cowlicks?
I don’t know if the gesture
rose out of appreciation for the feeding
or craving for salt from my brow,
but the baptism by rough tongue allowed both beasts
a startled moment of recognition.
Of course, this is neither origin nor explanation
of even the one cowlick licked,
let alone the others of its headstrong crop
sprouting like skinny saplings
towards the sun.
Since then they’ve been tamed,
trained and even chemically subdued
throughout my ephemeral attractive era.
But, oh, now I love it
when the barber cuts a bit too short!
Then they spring to life:
rebellious, uncultivated,
exclamation points on a life of statements.
For a moment the mirror shows me
that free-range kid again
and I remember that animal hunger
for everything salty and sweet
that the earth offers up.
(Previously published in The I-70 Review, 2023).
|
