A word from Richard:

“Several decades as an offshore salmon fisherman, during which I ran my troller---a steel, sail-rigged ketch---on the open sea from Oregon to Alaska, were the main inspiration for the stories and poems I’ve produced. Maybe due to having spent so much time rocked by the period and amplitude of ocean waves, the poetry generally trends toward meter and rhyme. I believe the rhythmic motion of the seas works its way over time into your soul...all fishermen and sailors are probably poets in some sense."

In addition to commercial fishing Richard has worked as a journalist publishing freelance articles, and as West Coast Bureau Chief for National Fisherman magazine. He helps support his writing habit by delivering boats of varying kinds and sizes along coastal waters and across oceans, an occupation that has flung him as far as Yokohama, Brisbane, Halifax, Martinique, Papeete, and Dillingham. 

He has published four books: West of Spencer, a fishing novel; Red Flags in Blue Water, an account of sea voyages that went impressively south; Tsiu Blue, a memoir-ish fable of the Gulf of Alaska coast that does its best to push the boundaries of plausibility; and a book of deep sea poems, Along the Fifty Fathom Line.