Meet Warwick, the Palouse cowboy poet, tonight on SPR

Nearly all of the writing that I’ve done over the years has been non-fiction. Most of it has been journalism, either reporting or feature stories or – since 1984 – film criticism.

That wasn’t my plan as a kid. I wanted to be a novelist. But I just never had what it takes to lose myself in a fictional setting with make-believe characters and attempt to make sense out of nothing. I leave that to people with actual talent – Jess Walter, for example.

Maybe the closest I’ve ever come to writing something other than non-fiction (aside from the lone short story that I sold to a locally published mystery collection) were the limericks that I contributed to the annual St. Patrick’s Day Limericks Contest that I ran for several years for The Spokesman-Review.

My experience there came in handy one year when, as a member of a fellowship club that meets monthly, I engaged in a limericks showdown with the noted cowboy poet Dick Warwick. I think I held my own, but I will always defer to the man from Rosalia whom I consider to be the Hemingway of Palouse poetry.

If you aren’t familiar with Warwick, you’ll have the opportunity tonight at 6:30. Spokane Public Radio (91.1 on your FM radio dial) will rebroadcast a Bookshelf interview of Warwick by Spokane poet Dennis Held.

It’ll be well worth your time. Besides, as SPR Music Director Verne Windham says, “Don’t be enslaved by the tyranny of the TV on incessantly.”

In closing, I’ll include one of Warwick’s limericks, which he composed as part of the 2007 version of the SR’s Limericks Contest. The theme was a tricky one: “Spokane – near nature, near perfect: missing the mark – or not! Legends, lunacies and luminaries.” But Warwick, and others, responded well.

‘Near nature, near perfect’ – how glib –

A rather hyperbolic squib.

At best it’s ingenuous;

As a shibboleth, tenuous –

At worst it’s an out-and-out fib.”