Richard Jarrette

Richard Jarrette grew up in California and North Carolina. He is the author of the poetry collections Beso the Donkey (2010), which won a Gold Medal for Poetry from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association and was a finalist for the Book of the Year from Foreword Review, and A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances (2015). Influenced by the work of W.S. Merwin and Zen Buddhism, Jarrette explores the linked fortunes of human and natural life. In an interview with Sleet Magazine, Jarrette said this of his practice as a poet: “You might say I am a radical ecologist which to me means a practical person. My poems begin with a bird, a spider, a tree, light moving through meadow grass, chirr of grasshoppers, the sound of wild pigs and how cows and calves do not lift their heads to the grunts of those pigs rooting for acorns under the oaks, which scare the shit out of me. A bird once shot past my window frame so fast my eyes had no time to track it. It came to me; there is much beyond the window frame I know nothing about.”
 
A licensed marriage and family therapist, Jarrette practices psychotherapy part-time in the Santa Ynez Valley in California.