Ricardo Kearns
Author Bio
About The Author
Rick Kearns, aka Rick Kearns-Morales is a poet, freelance writer and musician of Puerto Rican (Spanish/Taino) and European background based in Harrisburg, Pa. He was named Poet Laureate of the City of Harrisburg, Pa in 2014. Kearns is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory. He was also included in the national database of Latino Poets Laureate of the US in 2019, a listing sponsored by the Latino Book Review.
Kearns’ poems have appeared in the following anthologies:
Undocumented, Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (MSU Press, 2019)
Arbolarium, Antologia Poetica de los Cinco Continentes (Spanish language collection)
(Fundacion Pibes, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2019);
OIR ESE RIO, Poetry Anthology from Five Continents (Fundacion Pibes, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2017);
BULLYING Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions and Catharsis (Skyhorse Publishing, NY 2012);
I Was Indian (before being Indian was cool) (Foothills Publishing, NY 2009);
El Coro/A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (Univ. of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1998);
and ALOUD; Voices from the Nuyorican Cafe (Henry Holt & Co., NY, 1994. Winner of the American Book Award.)
His work has appeared in 80 literary reviews including:
The Massachusetts Review, Letras Salvajes (literary review from Puerto Rico), Letras (lit review of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, NY), Conversation Quarterly (UK), Painted Bride Quarterly, Chicago Review, Revival Literary Review (Ireland), ONTHEBUS, Poetry Motel, The Blue Guitar, Drum Voices Revue (So. Illinois University Edwardsville), The Patterson Review, HEART Quarterly, Big Hammer, Palabra: A Journal of Chicano and Literary Art, Yellow Medicine Review, Fledgling Rag, Revista Isla Negra (Argentina), Kweli Journal (Poets for Puerto Rico project), Palabritas (Latino poetry review run by students at Harvard University), Dialogo Cultural (Brazilian arts review in Ireland), Latino Book Review, and others.
Co-edited “Fatal Force: Poetic Justice A Poetry Anthology” with poet/activist David Acosta, 8/24.
Awards & Certifications
My poem “Everyday We Remember Oscar Lopez Rivera” won an Honorable Mention in the Split This Rock Poetry Contest, 2017.
My poem “the dead go swimming” was a Finalist in the Joy Harjo Poetry Contest sponsored by Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts” in January 2022.
My poem “I Saw You Crying” won an Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest 2024 Poetry Contest.
His poem "Everyday We Remember Oscar Lopez Rivera" won an honorable mention award in the national Split This Rock social justice poetry contest of 2017.
Kearns has given readings of his own poetry as the featured reader in Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City (Capicu, May 2012), Baltimore, Camden (NJ), the American Folklore Society (Zoom), and other places since 1988, including colleges and universities such as Cedar Crest College, Penn State University, Swarthmore College, Harrisburg Area Community College, and Rutgers University. Much of his work deals with his Puerto Rican heritage and identity, including his feelings about his Taino heritage. He has performed his work with musical accompaniment on various occasions, including sessions with: tabla; flamenco guitar; Latin percussion-congas, timbales, etc.; jazz saxophone; upright bass; jazz quartet of trumpet & congas, upright bass, guitar, sax & clarinet - the Con Alma Quartet from 2010 to 2014.
About Crow At the lawson hotel
Some poets have a great way of using words that make us marvel at their creativity and word play, yet they say nothing of importance. Other poets use words to impart wisdom, often in dull, pedantic rhythms. In Crow at the Lawson Hotel, Rick Kearns shows us, in eight succulent poems, how to do both. Using the crow as the central focus, he explores societal, existential, and personal themes, blending both pain and humor. It’s a collection that reveals great depth upon multiple readings. Kearns is a wondrous poet and these poems are a testament to that wonder.
The way they soar and circle and caw. Yeah. "Shiny black birds" -- their sounds, the way they communicate in flight, or alight on a power line to conjure or gossip.
Kearns calls it a screech. Strong, authoritarian-- maybe to interrupt traveling signals, cathode rays. Even caught in a yaw they can ripple the most imperceptible waves of glassy rivers.
And, Oh! their hip manner as they critique a stray sax solo lost in "the crumbling remains of the Lawson Hotel." Crows start playin' around sunrise, "they sweep in from the South", dark silhouettes over 7th Street, Cameron, Muench, Cumberland. All around the waterfront. All along the watchtower.
About Rufino's Secret
Boricua rises through the blood of Kearns' poems the way another ancestor, Rilke, in his 3rd Duino Elegy, explains how, inside us we haven't loved just someone in the future, but a fermenting tribe; just not one child, but fathers, cradled inside us like ruins of mountains, the dry riverbed of former mothers…feelings welled up from beings no longer here.
Address
500 Terry Francine St.
San Francisco, CA 94158
