Randy Roark
Randy Roark
1954: Born, Uncasville, CT.
1972-1976: Manages Ziesing Brothers’ Book Emporium Used Bookstore.
1972-1976: Audits classes with Alexander (Sandy) Taylor at Eastern Connecticut College. Assists Sandy in the publication of books and broadsides for Curbstone Press.
1973: First public poetry reading, as part of a group reading of James Scully’s “Quechua People’s Poetry.” Takes instruction in Transcendental Meditation, which he still practices daily.
1973-1976: Founds and hosts a series of readings at the Willimantic Arts Center.
1976: His poetry is anthologized in A World of Poetry (A World of Poetry Press)–his first professional publication.
1976-1979: Manages Mystic Seaport Museum’s Book Shop and Art Gallery.
1979: Arrives in Boulder, to study with Allen Ginsberg and attend Naropa Institute.
1980: Begins apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg, who was working on his Collected Poems. Transcribed journals 1978-1980, and transcribed and annotated all of his Naropa lectures on William Blake. Begins attending classes for a BFA in Poetics at Naropa. Studies with Ted Berrigan, Anselm Hollo, Philip Whalen, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Anne Waldman, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley.
1980-1983: Works as Administrative Assistant for the Poetics Department at Naropa Institute. Produces and hosts a series of student poetry readings in competition with the official poetry readings at Naropa Institute.
1983: Guest on Peter Jones’ Musical Retrospective for a multipart history of Bob Dylan on KUCB (now KAIR). Assistant to the Director of Naropa Institute’s Summer Writing Program. Graduates with a BFA in Poetry from Naropa Institute and gives the student commencement address.
1983-1985, 1995-1996: Publishes FRICTION, a literary arts magazine, including issues 2 Documents from the Kerouac Conference; 4 “Obscure Genius” (edited by Allen Ginsberg); 4 “The Clark Coolidge Issue”; and 10 “The Ira Cohen Issue.”
1984: Assistant Director of Naropa Institute’s Summer Writing Program.
1985: Clark Coolidge issue of FRICTION is nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Robert Creeley. Director of Naropa Institute’s Summer Writing Program. Produces their William Burroughs Conference (featuring Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Anne Waldman, William Burroughs, Eric Mottram, and Burroughs’ biographer Ted Morgan), and The One World Poetry Conference (featuring poets representing four continents and twelve countries, including Nanao Sakaki and Amiri Baraka).
1984-1986: Produces and hosts “Musical Retrospective” on KUCB (now KAIR), University of Colorado, Boulder, featuring audio documentaries on Brian Eno’s Obscure label, Laurie Anderson, the Sex Pistols, and each year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees, etc., etc.
1990: Studies Ezra Pound with Mary de Rachewiltz (Olga Rudge in attendance) at Brunnenberg Castle in Dorf Tirol, Italy; the writings of James Joyce with the author’s nephew in Dublin, Ireland. “Tours” England, Wales, and Scotland with Nancy Covey, studying traditional British folk music with living folk musicians, including Richard Thompson, Fairport Convention, Robin Williamson, Dougie MacLean, Alastair Anderson, Marc Ellington, John Allan, and others.
1991: Begins Laocoon Press, which has to date published over 40 collections of his poetry, travel writing, memoir, and music writing. Graduates with a MFA in Poetry and Prose from Naropa University and gives the student commencement address.
1991-1997: Transcribes edits, and annotates over 28,000 pages of lectures by Allen Ginsberg, 1974-1983, including lectures on Blake at Brooklyn College, and all lectures from China tour 1984, and the Hal Willner interview for “Holy Soul Jelly Roll,” as well as the Allen Ginsberg issue of New Censorship, 1991, and editing an unpublished ms. of Allen’s lectures on William Blake. (These transcriptions are available on-line through Allen Ginsberg website.)
1992: Cares for Philip Whalen at the Hartford Street Center in S.F. for three weeks, following his open-heart surgery and blindness.
1995: Edits 10 hours of interviews with Hal Willner into booklet text for Rhino Records 4CD anthology of Allen Ginsberg’s selected recordings, “Holy Soul Jelly Roll.”
1995-1997: Studies with Deepak Chopra in preparation for becoming a meditation instructor.
1995-2000: Founds and produces 24 mostly free art events in Boulder, Denver, and Taos as Dangerous And Difficult Art Productions (DADA Productions), including a Dada Festival, The Surrealist Festival, The Pre-Revolutionary Russian Poets, A Celebration of Larry Eigner, Zukofsky’s Catullus translations, a community reading of Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day, and multi-media productions of Louis Zukofsky’s A-24 (with Lee Ann Brown, Tom Peters, Ethie Friend), Ekphrasis and Cathexis, and Mona Lisa’s Veil.
1996: Awakening Osiris (Selva Editions). His interview with Anne Waldman–”A Vow to Poetry”–appears in Disembodied Poetics (University of New Mexico Press).
1997: Certified as a meditation instructor for Deepak Chopra’s organization. His elegies for Allen Ginsberg appear in Locomotives and Sunflowers (Nada Press) and In Memoriam Allen Ginsberg (Wright State University Press).
1997-1999: Works as a meditation instructor for Deepak Chopra.
1997-2015: Works for Sounds True, an audio book publisher in Louisville, Colorado, producing and editing audio and video by spiritual teachers from many traditions, including Buddhists Robert Thurman, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Lama Surya Das; neuroscientists Dan Siegel, Rick Hanson, and Andrew Newburg; Lakota Elder Joseph Marshall; Eckhart Tolle; Thomas Moore; Terry Tempest Williams; and the audio archives of William Burroughs, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, and Krishnamurti. He has also edited The Visionary Artist by Alex Gray, and worked with and produced musicians including Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Layne Redmond, Jane Siberry, October Project, Hans Christian (of Rasa), David Darling, Krishna Das, and Deva Premal. He created A Lamp in the Darkness from miscellaneous recordings by Jack Kornfield, who wrote in his acknowledgements: “Enormous gratitude to poet, editor, and steward of the Dharma Randy Roark for creating this book out of complicated oral teachings in a lucid and user-friendly form.”His blog on his life as a producer is available through manyvoices.soundstrue.com/author/randyr
1998: With an arts grant from the Neodata Endowment, produced a week-long Stan Brakhage Film Festival in Boulder, which was chosen as “Westword” magazine’s “Art-Film Festival of the Year,” including two 2-hour showings of Stan’s films at the Boulder Public Library, a poetry and film-showing at Penny Lane, a three-night retrospective on the films of Stan Brakhage on CATV Boulder, and an original two-hour interview with Stan and filmmaker Joel Haertling (nominated for a Community Service Award in 1998). As part of the festival, Boulder’s mayor Will Toor proclaims Stan’s birthday as Stan Brakhage Day. Produces a reading at the Boulder Book Store on the occasion of the publication of Philip Whalen’s selected poems, and a film of the event, shown on Boulder CATV. Films a performance of “Uncaged” at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, featuring the words and music of John Cage performed by Anne Waldman and four musicians, and a profile of poet Jack Collom.
1998-2000: Board member, The Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder (now Boulder Arts Commission)
2000: Vice President, The Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder (now Boulder Arts Commission); Hymns (Dead Metaphor Press). His work appears in anthology A Poet’s Alphabet (Tree House Press). Performs “Footnote to Howl” with rave band burste at the Bluebird, Denver, Colorado. Produces 12th Night for Art and Humanities Assembly of Boulder, featuring the best of Boulder’s theater, dance, film, poetry, and visual arts.
2001: One Night (On Acid from the Grateful Dead) Nest Egg Books. His long poem on alchemy, “A Map of the World,” (from A Map of the World, Laocoon Press) was selected for a special presentation at the International Congress of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in December 2001. Produces Chanting the Chakras, Layne Redmond (Sounds True). His interview with Anne Waldman–A Vow to Poetry–is published in the anthology A Vow to Poetry (Coach House Press). He guest-edits an issue of The Arts Paper on the history of Boulder poetry.
2001-2003: Following the attack on the World Trade Center, founds and edits for immediate release, an on-line literary journal with the help of poet-activist Jackie Sheeler.
2002: Dissolve: Screenplays to the Films of Stan Brakhage (Cityful Press, a recommended title by Small Press Distribution in January 2003, and featured on their catalog’s cover, Spring-Summer 2003); Mona Lisa’s Veil: New and Selected Poems, 1979-2001 (Baksun Books). His work appears in Views, a collaborative work with artists and poets Tree Bernstein, Darrin Daniel, and Laura Wright (Tree House Press). A conversation with Tamra Spivey of Lucid Nation is published as Dialogue of a Hundred Preoccupations (Laocoon Press) and distributed to the press with the release of their album, “Tacoma Ballet.”
2003: The San Francisco Notebooks (Elik Press), revised version in What Have I Become; Jean Cocteau: The First Half (Laocoon Press)—a documentary film that opened Hofstra University’s “Jean Cocteau: Writing with Light” Film Festival in October 2003. Writes the liner notes for “Battery: Live at Naropa 1974-2002,” by Anne Waldman, and “Rattle Up a Deer: Bernadette Mayer and Anne Waldman Live at Penny Lane.” Appears as The Conductor in Mary Kite’s adaptation of Peter Greenaway’s “Water Plays” at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder.
2004: Elegies for the Post-Modern American Poets (Elik Press), revised version in LIT. Edits First Thought, Best Thought: a collection of four lectures on writing by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, and Anne Waldman (Sounds True)–chosen as a featured selection by Barnes and Noble for Poetry Month that year. Work anthologized in Once Shamans, Now Poets (Poets’ Press, Scotland, 2004) and Poems from Penny Lane (Farfalla Press). Produces Invoking the Muse, Layne Redmond (Sounds True)
2005: Greek Ritual, Spiritual Practices, Sacred Architecture, and Music: A Workbook (Laocoon Press). Traveled with Layne Redmond and ten of her women drummers to perform rituals at sites sacred to Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece and Cyprus. Begins a 10-year project to travel twice a year to places of special meaning to him, culminating in his final trip in 2015, when he returns to Greece to distribute Layne Redmond’s ashes at the beehive tomb/treasury of Atreus/Agamemnon in Mycenae, the Muse’s spring in Delphi, and Aphrodite’s cave on the side of the Acropolis in Athens to fulfill a promise he made to her shortly before her death in October 2013. Over 200,000 words of this work (The Decalogue) have been published and archived (newtopia.org) in 42 columns (illustrated with his photographs) for the on-line arts and culture magazine, Newtopia, including trips to Morocco, northern India, Nepal, China, Tibet, and on safari in southern Africa.
2007: What Have I Become: The Travel Notebooks (Laocoon Press); Map of the World (Laocoon Press); Happiness (Laocoon Press). Produces Heart Chakra Meditations, Layne Redmond (Sounds True)
2008: LIT: A Distillation of the Norton Anthologies of Literature (Laocoon Press); The Convalescence Notebook (Laocoon Press)
2009: Travels to Greece and Cyprus with Layne for a series of performances and workshops.
2010: Hosted a YouTube channel featuring world music he’d collected in travels in Morocco, Africa, India, Nepal, Tibet, and China in support of “Poet’s Progress”–a series of travel writings for literary-political on-line magazine, Newtopia. Edits Chakra Meditation, Layne Redmond (Sounds True).
2012: Produces a video of a reading by Thurston Moore and Anne Waldman and others at the Laughing Goat Coffeeshop in Boulder.
2015: Retires from Sounds True (but remains for a year or so as Eckhart Tolle’s audio editor). Travels to Cyprus to work with Cyprus Cares, a refugee-support organization. Walks (the last two thirds of) the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Spends the entire month at the Edinburgh Festival: sees 40 performances in 28 days. Catalog of My Collection of Hand-Painted Nepalese Religious Paintings (Laocoon Press). Catalog of My Collection of Psychedelic Art (Laocoon Press). Catalog of My House Museum (Laocoon Press). A Poet’s Progress: Journals of 20 Pilgrimages over 10 Years (Laocoon Press).
2017: Returns to Boulder. Continues to assemble source material for a memoir of 1979 to the present, whenever that will be.
2018: Attempts to walk the South West Coast Path in England. Pulls up lame in Lizard. Finishes the route, but mostly by bus.
2019: Begins two radio shows for KGNU: a monthly arts show and a weekly show that was whatever caught his fancy that week (mostly what a not-that-younger DJ described as mid-century rock). TEDx Talk on Mindfulness for Passport to Mindfulness (Denver)
He has lectured at the University of Colorado (Boulder), Metropolitan State College (Denver), Niwot High School (Boulder), Fairview High School (Boulder), September School (Boulder), Naropa University (Boulder), the American University in Amsterdam Holland, and spoke at the Menzel Arts Centre’s celebration on Bob Dylan, where he spoke on Bob Dylan’s Christian period (Denver, Colorado).
He has performed internationally, often incorporating the use of projected slides, music, American Sign Language, and other performers.
He has two grown children—Christopher in Massachusetts, and Maelle in Altanta.