Rick Newby's Page

A resident of Helena, I’m a poet who also works as an editor, independent scholar, and cultural journalist. I’ve worked in the publishing industry most of my adult life, and when I can, I like to promote Montana’s wonderful poets and storytellers. Toward this end, I helped edit the anthologies The New Montana Story; An Ornery Bunch: Tales and Anecdotes Collected by the W.P.A. Montana Writers' Project; and Writing Montana: Literature Under the Big Sky, and I had a hand in Lowell Jaeger’s Poems Across the Big Sky.

Most recently, through Drumlummon Institute, I’ve had the pleasure of bringing back into print the poems of two important mid-twentieth-century Montana poets, Grace Stone Coates (Food of Gods and Starvelings) and Frieda Fligelman (Notes for a Novel), as well as the first novel (The Pass, 1944) by Thomas Savage, author of The Power of the Dog. In this endeavor, my collaborators have included scholars Lee Rostad (Coates), Alexandra Swaney (Fligelman), and O. Alan Weltzien (Savage).

My own books of poems include A Radiant Map of the World, which was selected for the 1981 Montana Arts Council First Book Award; Old Friends Walking in the Mountains; The Suburb of Long Suffering; and most recently, Sketches Begun in My Studio on a Sunday Afternoon and Completed the Following Day Near the Noon Hour on the Lower Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, published by master letterpress printer Peter Koch.

As a poet, I love to collaborate with artists in other disciplines. My collaborators have included performance artists Beck McLaughlin and Wally Bivins; videographer Martin Holt; visual artists Jack Jasper, Doug Turman, Robert Harrison, Sandra Dal Poggetto, and J. M. Cooper; and the musical agglomerations Bill Borneman Poetry & Jazz Ensemble, Rent Party Improv, the Wilbur Rehmann Quintet, and the Cascade String Quartet. I’m a longtime member of the steering committee for the Helena Festival of the Book, which features annual poetics and Montana literary heritage lectures. Besides my work as editor of Drumlummon Views, the online journal of Montana arts and culture, I currently sit on the Montana Arts Council and on the Advisory Committee of the Montana Center of the Book (a program of Humanities Montana). In 2009, I received the Montana Governor’s Award in the Humanities.

A Radiant Map of the World (poems) by Rick Newby, 1981

Old Friends Walking in the Mountains (poems) by Rick Newby, with twelve etchings by Doug Turman, 1994

Writing Montana by Rick Newby (ed.) and Suzanne Hunger (ed.), 1996

An Ornery Bunch: Tales and Anecdotes Collected by the W.P.A. Montana Writers' Project by Megan Hiller, Alexandra Swaney, Elaine Peterson, & Rick Newby (eds.), 1999

A Most Desperate Situation: Frontier Adventures of a Young Scout, 1858-1864 by Walter Cooper, Rick Newby, and C. M. Russell, 2000

A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence by Janet Koplos, Rick Newby, Patricia Failing, Chere Jiusto and Peter Held (ed.), 2001

The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting by Rick Newby, Andrea Pappas, Ben Mitchell, and the Yellowstone Art Museum, 2002

The Suburb of Long Suffering (poems) by Rick Newby, 2002

The New Montana Story: an Anthology by Rick Newby (ed.), 2003

The Rocky Mountain Region: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures by Rick Newby (ed.), 2004

Food of Gods and Starvelings by Grace Stone Coates, Lee Rostad (ed.), and Rick Newby (ed.), 2007

Notes for a Novel: The Selected Poems of Frieda Fligelman by Frieda Fligelman, Alexandra Swaney (ed.), and Rick Newby (ed.), 2008

Sketches Begun in My Studio on a Sunday Afternoon and Completed the Following Day Near the Noon Hour on the Lower Slopes of the Rocky Mountains by Rick Newby, 2008

Our stated purpose is “to promote and publish art and literatures created in Montana and the broader American West; to encourage, promote, and commission critical writing about cultural productions—including film/ video, visual arts, literature, performing arts, food, scientific discoveries, architecture, and design—created in Montana and the broader American West; to research and publish scholarship about the natural and cultural landscapes of the region; and to produce and promote audio recordings and film/video documentaries on a variety of cultural subjects.”

Visit the Drumlummon Institute website.

"The Montana Arts Council is the agency of state government established to develop the creative potential of all Montanans, advance education, spur economic vibrancy and revitalize communities through involvement in the arts. Montana will be known far and wide as -The Land of Creativity,' where the arts are essential to the creativity, imagination and entrepreneurship that make Big Sky Country the very best place on earth to live, learn, work and play."

Visit the Montana Arts Council website.

Humanities Montana is Montana’s independent nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Humanities Montana was founded in 1972 by thirteen Montana citizens—academic and civic leaders—in response to Congress’ National Arts and Humanities Act of 1965. Since that time, Humanities Montana has benefited hundreds of Montana organizations and thousands of its citizens, providing support for public programs in the humanities throughout the state. The educational and cultural programs sponsored by Humanities Montana help Montanans to develop a deeper understanding of humanity’s values and beliefs, intellectual achievements, diverse cultures, and heritages.

Visit the Humanities Montana website.