RON WHITEHEAD is an award-winning poet, author, editor, teacher and activist, a visionary word-slinger who has a special interest in the relationship between his writing and the various musical worlds he draws on and inhabits with energy and enthusiasm.
In the second of an extended, two-part exchange, regular Rock and the Beat Generation interviewer LEON HORTON goes head to head with the legendary US poet to discuss his life, work and a further new book On a Feather of Light: New & Selected Poems to follow the also recent Crow and Outlaw: New and Selected Works, which we discussed in last month’s opening salvo.
A prolific penman and performer and a friend to many of the leading Beat writers and particularly close to one of their literary heirs Hunter S. Thompson, Whitehead here gives significant emphasis to the way music has shaped his development and encouraged his output as a writer. But first, we pick up the conversation with a question about Whitehead’s role as an editor…
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Leon Horton: Do you enjoy the challenge of editing the work of others? Who were some of your favourites?
Ron Whitehead: Yes, I’ve always enjoyed editing. Hm. I’ve edited hundreds of titles, and enjoyed editing most of them. Burroughs’ ‘Searching for Jack Kerouac’ and Bono’s ‘Elvis: American David’ and Margaret Ann Harrell’s The Hells Angel’s Letters come to mind. But there are many many more.
LH: Music has been another dominant force in your life, performing and recording with musicians such as David Amram, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, and the psychedelic rock band Blaak Heat. Is there a corner on a street where music and poetry meet?
RW: When I was a boy I attended 223 funerals. I just got off the phone with Mama, talking about how music and poetry have been lifesavers time and again and about the the 223 funerals I attended with her when I was a boy and how funeral dirges and old time mountain and gospel and church music played such a big role in my life long deep and abiding appreciation for and love of music. And I mean every kind of music.
I said, 'Mama, music and poetry come from somewhere up there in the Milky Way. Songs and poems are gifts from angels shared through the voices of creative spirits here on Earth. Mama, I really don't know where poems and songs come from but I'm sure thankful for them.’ Mama said, ‘Ronnie, me too. I don't know what we'd do without poems and stories and songs.’
With angelic voices, Mama sang alto and her sister Jo Carolyn sang soprano. They sang at 223 funerals and they took us kids to every one of them. Music has saved my life so many times. Music inspires me to keep on keeping on no matter what the hell is going on. I'll never abandon song. I'll never quit listening to the sweet gift of music.
Growing up in the backwoods of Kentucky I listened to every kind of music. And I loved it all. Church music and funeral dirges. Mama and my Aunt Jo singing acapella duets. Far back as I remember I see people climbing on coffins including Pappy Whitehead trying to keep Mammy from leaving him behind. Her lying there in the pine.
I see a thousand people lined up outside little Walton's Creek church singing ‘Amazing Grace’ at Grandaddy Render’s funeral. And I hear Mama and Jo and Grandaddy singing 'In The Pines’ and ‘There's a whippoorwill singing in the pale moonlight’. I heard gospel and blues and country mixed with traditional, old time, folk, mountain, Appalachian, going back to Ireland and Scotland and England and Wales.
And I listened to Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams and Bill Monroe and Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn and Woody Guthrie and Odetta and the Carter Family and Pete Seeger and he Everly Brothers and Merle Travis and Robert Johnson and Mose Rager and the Montgomery Brothers and Brother Mathew's Gospel Quartet with my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Duncan banging on that piano like I'd never heard in no Baptist church and I got excited: Oh Lord can music make you feel this good?!
It brought tears to my boy eyes, made goosebumps run all up and down my back and all over my body, made my flat topped hair stand up straight and tall without no butch wax on it. And then came Elvis and Johnny and Jerry Lee and my parents said, 'Turn it off.’ But they were glued too and didn't couldn't move eyes staring in disbelief but excited like what in the world is this.
And everybody felt that way more excited than ashamed wanting to be part of that energy that we all know must be a gift from some greater source and, for me, Bob Dylan from the first note I heard him perform late one night when I was 12 upstairs in the attic where my brother and I slept holes in the walls of our old farmhouse wind whispering through cedar and pine through those holes.
I saw plenty of ghosts in that attic but I also every night listened to 89 WLS on AM radio out of Chicago and the sound went in and out depending on the weather and Daddy some nights he home from working double shifts at the coal mines yelled up the stairs, ‘Turn that damn thing down!’ as the radio had gotten real loud and Bob was singing, ‘How does it feel’ and, being a young poet who loves music as much as poetry, well Bob's words and I knew them all by heart Bob's words his rock’n’roll poetry has saved me time and again.
Growing up in the pioneer lands of Kentucky where Bluegrass music was birthed, a distant cousin of the Everly Brothers, I grew up with music and I mean every kind of music including music of Mama and Aunt Jo singing at 223 funerals but it was the rock’n’roll of poetry that has sustained me all these years that saves me from death in life. Rock’n’roll poetry always lifts and inspires me to think about resurrection again to think about redemption again. Music saves my life and rock’n’roll poetry saves my soul.
LH: You attended the legendary Jack Kerouac Conference at New York University in 1995. How was it for you? Were you witness to the hoo-ha surrounding the ejection of Jan Kerouac?
RW: Yes, I was in the thick of the Sampas/Kerouac Estate v. Jan Kerouac debacle. I was a big supporter of Jan during that dispute. At the end of the conference I rode with Jan and Gerald Nicosia and Chris Felver and Kent Fielding up to Lowell, Massachusetts. I stood next to Jan at the side of her father Jack’s grave.
LH: It was at that conference that you first met Hunter S. Thompson. I know you guys became firm friends, a friendship which endured, but was it love at first sight between Crow and Coyote? Is it true that while visiting Hunter he got you to perform his legendary obit for Richard Nixon?
RW: ‘I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics.’
– Hunter S. Thompson, March 26th, 1998
I grew up on a wild nature backwoods farm, in the heart of the Kentucky coal fields. I come from a long line of farmers, coal miners, strong women, singers, musicians, storytellers, and folks with the second sight. Hunter S. Thompson had the second sight. He saw as a poet sees. He could see into people, into a situation, in a heartbeat. A poet's heart, in a Kentucky boy. Hunter said, ‘I consider myself essentially a road man for the boys upstairs, the Lords of Karma.’ Hunter and I recognized each other in a lightning flash instant.
‘The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.’
– Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
My friend and hero Hunter S. Thompson is dead. I followed his life and work from the release of Hell’s Angels till now. I will continue to follow it.
My friend Gene Williams and I sold Hunter’s books. We sold the first Rolling Stone magazines in the underground bookstore, For Madmen Only, and in the headshop, The Store, we operated on South Limestone in Lexington Kentucky. I never dreamed I’d eventually work with Hunter and with members of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Amram, Diane di Prima, Amiri Baraka, and others. We sold all the books by and about them in our underground bookstore. Their works changed my life.
Dreams do come true.
Hunter shot himself. He is gone. He died in his kitchen in his cabin at Owl Farm Woody Creek Colorado. I read his Nixon obituary, ‘He Was A Crook’, and other works to him in that kitchen. I took my children to visit him. He loved young people. He loved his family. I drank and did drugs with him. We watched basketball.
One night, years ago, in early May my son Nathanial and I arrived, driving 24 hours non-stop from Kentucky, just in time to watch the NBA playoffs with Hunter. Don Johnson called several times wanting us to come over.
Kentuckian Rex Chapman was playing for the Phoenix Suns. The Suns were down by nine points with one minute to go in the game. I looked at Hunter and said I’ll bet you that Rex will hit three threes and tie the game, that the Suns will win by one point in three overtimes. Hunter looked at me and laughed. Rex hit three threes and tied the game. But Phoenix lost in three overtimes, by one point. I got damn close. Hunter paid closer attention to me after that.
We talked about life about our families about literature. Hunter was a good kind man. He was full of life. He was tough. He was a real human being. He was spirit, holy spirit, no matter what anyone says.
Pictured above: Poet Ron Whitehead’s latest verse collection, a second such volume in 2025
Hunter is one of America’s one of the world’s greatest writers. He stands shoulder to shoulder with Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, all five America’s best prose writers, bar none.
I had the honor of producing, with the help of Douglas Brinkley and many young people and friends, the Hunter S. Thompson Tribute at Memorial Auditorium on 4th Street in Louisville Kentucky in December 1996.
We had a sold out standing room audience of over 2,000.
I brought in Hunter, his Mom Virginia, his son Juan, the Sheriff of Pitkin County Bob Braudis, Johnny Depp, Warren Zevon, David Amram, Douglas Brinkley, Roxanne Pulitzer, Harvey Sloane, Susi Wood & a bluegrass band, and many more. The Mayor gave Hunter the keys to the city. The Governor named Hunter, Johnny, Warren, David, Doug and me Kentucky Colonels. It was a spectacular event.
Jonathan Swift, George Orwell, William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson are literary giants, visionaries who have much in common.
People continue to say that there will be no audience for Thompson’s work, that no one will understand or care. Yet as I travel across America across the world working with young people, of all ages, I witness a movement away from the constraints of non-democratic puritan totalitarian cultures. I see a new generation that recognizes the lies of the power elite, a generation that is turning to the freethinkers the freedom fighters of the 50s and 60s, recognizing, honoring, them as mentors.
Art is an innate drive that seizes a human being and makes her or him its instrument. The artist is not simply a person acting freely, in pursuit of a merely private end, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through her or his person. Artists have moods, free will, personal aims, but as artists, they are bearers of a collective humanity, carrying and shaping the common unconscious life of the species.
I have heard more than once that Hunter S. Thompson is a madman. That oh look at what he could have done if he lived a more sane life.
Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, pre-eminent Jewish author, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in The Town Beyond the Wall, says: ‘Mad Moishe, the fat man who cries when he sings and laughs when he is silent...Moishe—I speak of the real Moishe, the one who hides behind the madman—is a great man. He is far-seeing. He sees worlds that remain inaccessible to us. His madness is only a wall, erected to protect us: to see what Moishe’s bloodshot eyes see would be dangerous.’ In Jewish mysticism, the prophet often bears the facade of madness.
Hunter S. Thompson stands in direct lineage to the great writers and prophets. And, as with the prophets of old, the message may be too painful for the masses to tolerate, to hear, to bear. They may, and usually do, condemn, even kill, the messenger. Hunter stood as long as he could.
He fought a valiant fight. He was a brave yet sensitive soul. He was a sacred shaman warrior. He saw. He felt. He recorded his visions. He took alcohol and drugs to ease the pain generated by what he saw what he felt. He lived on his own terms. He died on his own terms.
Did the masses kill Hunter? Did he kill himself? He found the courage to stand up against the power mongers and the masses. At least thirteen times he should have died but, miraculously, didn’t. He chose to take his own life. He completed the work he came to do.
If life is a dream, as some suggest, sometimes beautiful sometimes desperate, then Hunter’s work is the terrible saga of the ending of time for the American Dream. With its action set at the heart of darkness of American materialist culture, with war as perpetual background, playing on the television, Hunter S. Thompson, like the prophets of old, shows how we, through greed and power lust, have already gone over the edge.
As Jack Kerouac, through his brilliant oeuvre, breathed hope into international youth culture, Thompson shows how the ruling power-elite is not about to share what it controls with idealists yearning for a world of peace, love and understanding.
We must look beyond the life of the artist to the body of work itself. That is the measure of success. Like those who have re-examined Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to find a multi-layered literary masterpiece, we must look deep into Thompson’s work and find the deep multi-layered messages. His books, especially the early ones and his letters, are literary masterpieces equal to the best writing ever produced.
Knowledge, from the inception of Modernism, and through post-modernism and chaos to t it was movedhe Ocean of Consciousness, is reorganized, redefined through Literature, Art, Music, and Film. The genres are changing, the canons are exploding, as is culture.
The mythopoetics, the privileged sense of sight, of modern, contemporary, avant-garde cutting edge poets, musicians, artists, filmmakers are examples of art forms of a society, a culture, a civilization, a world, in which humanity lives, not securely in cities nor innocently in the country, but on the apocalyptic, simultaneous edge of a new realm of being and understanding.
The mythopoet, female and male, the shaman, Hunter S. Thompson returns to the role of prophet-seer by creating myths that resonate in the minds of readers, myths that speak with the authority of the ancient myths, myths that are gifts from the shadow.
LH: You are heavily involved with GonzoFest, an annual celebration that honours Thompson’s literary legacy through lectures, live music, panel discussions and the spoken word. What can you tell us about this year’s event in New Orleans?
RW: Dennie Humphrey and I founded GonzoFest Louisville. We produced ten of them, with the help of a hard working production team. As few as a thousand and as many as ten thousand people attended them. Although I have retired from producing events, I agreed to be Advisor for GonzoFest New Orleans 2025 and to present the ‘Keynote State of Gonzo Address’ and to perform with David Amram and ZU ZU YA YA. The event was held from May 15th thru 18th. The day-time venue was the historic Garden District Bookshop. The four night-time venues were the Howlin’ Wolf Club, the Allways Lounge, Cafe Istanbul, and the Library Bar. There was music & poetry & scholarly panels featuring the world’s leading Hunter S. Thompson & Gonzo scholars.
LH: Would Hunter have approved of GonzoFest do you think?
RW: I've heard the question many times: ‘What would Hunter think about all this?’ And by ‘all this’ they mean GonzoFest, they mean the mural on the side of the Monkey Wrench, they mean the Mayor’s proclamation changing the name of Louisville to Hunter's Gonzoville, they mean the banner at the Bristol Bar & Grill on Bardstown Road, they mean Hunter getting inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, they mean the ten GonzoFests Dennie Humphrey and I produced, they mean his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky finally honoring him, they mean the Official Hunter S. Thompson Tribute I produced on December 12th 1996, they mean the 29 years I've spent working to honor Hunter's life and work, and yes they mean this totally unexpected and out of the blue GonzoFest New Orleans 2025 produced by Kent Fielding with Margaret Ann Harrell and a team of valiant volunteers.
When die-hard Hunter fans ask me that question, I know they’re asking ‘Wouldn’t Hunter sneer at all this nonsense? Wouldn’t he see it as selling out?’ And to them I say ‘HELL NO!’ Hunter knew he was a helluva writer. He knew he deserved the recognition. He watched the film footage of the 1996 Tribute for the rest of his life. He was honored!
When I was asked to serve as the inductor of Hunter S. Thompson into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, I said, ‘HELL YES!’ Here are some of the words I shared during that ceremony on January 28th, 2015:
‘If life is a dream, as some suggest, sometimes beautiful sometimes desperate, then Hunter S. Thompson’s work is the terrible saga of the ending of time for the American Dream. With its action set at the heart of American materialist culture, with war as perpetual background, playing on the television, Hunter S. Thompson, like the prophets of old, shows how we, through greed and power lust, have already gone over the edge. As Jack Kerouac, through his brilliant oeuvre, breathed hope into international youth culture, Thompson shows how the ruling power elite is not about to share what it controls with idealists yearning for a world of peace, love and understanding.’
In 2025, Hunter still has the power to disturb those who cling to the Great Capitalist Way. Hunter still unnerves the power elite. Those folks intentionally focus on the drugs and the booze and the crazy-man antics, the weird turned pro, so they can dismiss Hunter’s message, his brilliant writing, by dismissing the artist’s lifestyle.
LH: It’s a question flying across social media all the time, but what do you think Hunter would have made of the shit show currently going down in the US and, by extension, globally? As an activist, what do you make of the current shit show?
RW: I see Hunter sitting in the Kitchen at Owl Farm, mouth open, without screaming, foaming at the mouth. The Book of Revelation is open to the four horsemen of the apocalypse passage, Revelation 6:1-8. The USA is in the most dangerous place ever. Hunter predicted this, in Hell’s Angels. I’ve been warning folks about it for years. Now it’s here. I hope we survive.
LH: You contributed to and co-edited A Burroughs Compendium: Calling the Toads (Hozomeen Press,1998), in which you interviewed the great man himself. That must have been a terrifying prospect. How well did you know Burroughs at the time of the interview?
RW: Yes, I produced A Burroughs Compendium: Calling The Toads and was co-editor with Denis Mahoney, RIP. James Grauerholz and Allen Ginsberg were both helpful with contacts, opening doors, and providing photos. And, in 1996, Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley and I produced the 48-hour non-stop music & poetry Insomniacathon in New Orleans. I was Guest Editor for a special Beat Generation issue of Tribe, which at the time was the main cultural monthly magazine for New Orleans.
Brinkley and I got a historic marker put up in front of Burroughs’ home in Algiers, just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. With James Grauerholz’s help we had a ‘Live Phone Conversation’ with Burroughs during the Insomniacathon, at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, where we held the daytime events. At the end of my interview with Burroughs I added my poem ‘Calling The Toads’ which I wrote for him. He loved it. My interview with Burroughs turned out to be the penultimate one. I lined up what turned out to be the last one with my friend Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. The band took Michael Stipe with them out to visit Burroughs at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, for that interview.
LH: One question you asked Burroughs was ‘How did you first become conscious of people’s perception of you as an icon?’ I’d like to put the same question to you…
RW: Thank you for asking. Long process of non-stop writing, travels, publications, productions, interviews. Whew. Makes me tired just thinking about it. Can’t believe I’m doing this interview. At the end of every interview I always say, ‘That’s the last fucking interview I’ll ever do.’ Then I laugh and do another damn interview. Ha!
LH: Do you, as Burroughs himself did, albeit satirically, have any ‘words of advice for young people’?
RW: Here’s some advice for young people:
When I was born I fell through the air. I crashed through a chandelier. There was nothing to hold on to. I passed the moon. The sky was full of stars. Crickets and frogs were singing. An old lamp burned low. Beyond distant clouds, blue waves. My love is more beautiful than all the flowers. She is with me now. Eternal longing is no more. There is no ground below me. There is no end to my journey.
When I was seven years old I recited Joyce Kilmer's poem ‘Trees’ to a living room of relatives who had come to spend Thanksgiving weekend with my family. It was my birthday. We were singing old time songs when Daddy asked me to recite a poem. I started memorizing poems when I was five. I love trees and all of nature. ‘Trees’ was my favorite poem so I summoned up my courage and recited it. Folks clapped and screamed. Something happened in that moment that prompted me to realize I was a poet. I had no idea what it meant. I simply knew it was true.
It wasn't until I left the farm when I was 17 that I found the courage and came out of the closet and proclaimed, meekly at first, then with growing confidence, that I was a poet. Every time I said, ‘I am a poet’, it felt good and right and true. Still does. So come out of whatever closet you’re hiding in and be your own authentic original voice. Find a dream and build a bridge from where you are to where you want to be by taking one step at a time. Nothing compares to living and being your dream. Poetry is my genuine nature.
The best way for me to most effectively express and share with others what I have to say, the story of my life, the nature of my being is through poetry. For years I tried living a so-called normal life. I had successes and failures, mostly failures. Time and again I lost everything. Why? Because I refused to bow down and do shit just because some supposed higher authority thought I should. I refused to bow down to the monster of authority for authority's sake.
I started standing up to authority when I was five years old. I've always been stubborn as hell. I prefer to get along with everybody but I realized when I was a kid that there are bullies and tyrants everywhere and I was gonna have to figure out ways to get around or over or under or through them in order to live life on my own terms, which was to be free, to be a poet, to go my own damn way, to live and be my own dreams, not somebody else's. I have walked through the fires, fought the battles, waged the wars, been defeated but never fucking annihilated.
I have been knocked down so many damn times I can't count them but each and every time I have found a way, usually with the help of a guardian angel or two or three, to get back up out of the muddy ditch and get back on the dirt road and head on again toward the lighthouse of my salvation, which has always been poetry and music. For me poetry and music are one and the same. I don't see any difference.
Poems and songs are the language of angels, translated by a few creative spirits, spiritual warriors, here on earth, creative forces of the universe. Poets dwell in this hard world and simultaneously in the realms of the creative imagination. Poets are one force, one dancing whirling energy. We are lightning and thunder. We are the storm.Poets are light and love. I have done whatever it has taken to be a poet. And it has taken everything, time and again.
Blood, sweat, and tears don't even begin to tell the tale. Read my books. Listen to my albums. I can't even begin to convey what the hell it means, what it takes to be a poet. It takes everything to be a poet. Die and be reborn. Time and again. Rise from the ashes. Never give up. Poetry is life. Life is poetry.
LH: I was amazed to read that you met the Dalai Lama. How on earth or in heaven did that come about?
RW: I worked for a year to convince Ferlinghetti to give a reading at the University of Louisville as part of the International Reading Series Kent Fielding and I launched in April 1992 by bringing Diane di Prima in for a week-long visit. Then we brought Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso, and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. I wrote and called Ferlinghetti. His answer was usually, ‘I’m semi-retired from doing all that.’ I decided to call one more time. When I asked, yet again, Lawrence said, ‘You aren’t gonna give up are you?’ I laughed and said, ‘No.’ We both laughed. He then said, ‘If you’ll take me to Thomas Merton’s grave I’ll come.’ I said, ‘Done.’
In April 1993 I brought Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his son, Lorenzo, to Louisville for a week-long visit. Lawrence gave a standing room only reading at the University of Louisville, where I was teaching. At his request, I took him to visit Thomas Merton’s grave at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Brother Patrick Hart, Merton’s secretary, and editor of his journals, gave us the grand tour of the Abbey.
On the hour-long drive back to Louisville, Lawrence told me about Merton spending the night with him in San Francisco, the last night of his life in the USA, before heading on to Asia where he had three talks with the Dalai Lama, inspiring him to become more ecumenical in his world view. After the third talk Merton died, supposedly an accidental death, of electrocution. Ferlinghetti suggested I bring the Dalai Lama to Kentucky for a talk and to visit Merton’s grave.
A year later, in April 1994, the Dalai Lama, for the 1st time, visited Kentucky. When I met him I asked him to share with me a message I could then share with young people, of all ages. I told him that in May, the next month, I would be producing a 48-hour non-stop music & poetry Insomniacathon for New York University to kick off their week-long 50-year Celebration of the Beat Generation and over 300 young people, from around the world, would be performing at my event.
The Dalai Lama smiled and gave me a long message. As he spoke I didn't hear the actual words he was saying. All I heard were the words to the poem I wrote, immediately following our visit, titled ‘Never Give Up’. After the Dalai Lama gave me the message he walked over to me, took my hand, looked deep into my eyes, then bowed, thereby blessing the message, the poem, and me. It was a life changing experience.
Never Give Up
Never give up
No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in the world
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Develop the heart
Be compassionate
Not just for your friends
But for everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In the world and in your heart
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up
The poem has appeared all over the world, in every kind of publication, including at least two of the Dalai Lama’s books. Half the time it only has the Dalai Lama’s name on it. And I’m fine with that. The most important thing to me is for the message to get out into the world.
LH: You have lectured at numerous academic institutions, including the University of Louisville, New York University, Hofstra University, University of Iceland, Nijmegen University in The Netherlands and many more. Does teaching come naturally to you? Is it a kind of performance?
RW: Teaching comes naturally. My goal is always to communicate, illuminate, inspire, uplift. To make the classroom experience real. If it ain’t real it ain’t no fuckin’ deal!
LH: You have been honoured with numerous awards over the years, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (twice) and for the Nobel Prize in Literature. How important are awards to a writer? Are they something we should strive for? Are they a double-edged sword? I’m only asking, of course, because I secretly want one.
RW: Am I the only one who sometimes hears the voices, imagined or not, of my critics? I realize that, as often as not, I create many of the conversations that go on in my head. I'm finally at a place in my life where I often find those voices hilarious. Here's a familiar one, the voice of my Father:
‘Pull your pants down and let the lice out, even if the fresh air kills you. Which is worse? I know you're from Kentucky but my God didn't your mother teach you that Cleanliness is next to Godliness! Have some respect for yourself! Good Lord, have you no shame?! You obviously don't wash your ears. when you hear something you dislike. This is the last time I'll remind you: You aren't some famous hermit from the Mount of Olives! Living without a dime in a ramshackle little house full of filthy dogs! But you obviously don't get it! No, you act like you live on the moon or a cloud! And your so-called ancient talents?! You couldn't make a rhyme even if you had a bucket of talents and a lifetime supply of wine! But there you sit as if your glory's won. I'll tell you son, you're headed for a tragic ending! You know what they do with poet laureates?! They drown them in the river! It's time for you young man to get a real job! Where's your resume? Let me see it! You sit around all day wishing in vain to preserve your life by hearing the cry of a sandhill crane and writing a poem about it! Don't you know real men kill cranes for sport! It's time for you to straighten up and fly right! You've wasted your entire life up to now! Don't you care what people think about you?! Don't you know you're driving your mother and me and everyone else crazy?!’
LH: 2020 saw the release of the documentary Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead, which took over 10 years to film. How did the documentary come about? And what does it feel like watching your life play out on screen like that?
RW: I was way beyond honored that Nick Storm, of Storm Generation Films, had the idea for the film and stuck with it from inception to completion, which took over a decade. And I’m thankful that Clayton Luce (Dark Star TV) joined forces with Nick to complete the film. Although I worked with both of them throughout the production process, I waited until the premiere to see the completed feature length documentary.
I hoped for the best but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I was beyond grateful. They did a brilliant job. And I was also mighty relieved that the film finally reached fruition. It was a long process. The film premiered, in Louisville, Kentucky, to packed houses at Village 8 Theaters and at Actors Theater. It’s now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Films Documentaries.
LH: If I put a gun to your head and said you can only have one maxim in life, what would it be?
RW: What a gift, Life!
LH: Crow and Outlaw is an extraordinary collection, the culmination of a life given over to poetry – to the redemptive power of poetry – and hot on its tail comes On a Feather of Light: New & Selected Poems (Pennington Press). Should we view the two as bookends to your life so far?
RW: All my books and albums are my autobiography, the story of my life. I’m thankful to Chris Dean and Wendy Cartwright at Keeping the Flame Alive Press and to Tony Acree at Pennington Press for publishing my two newest books. They all did beautiful work! I’m thankful to all the publishers and labels I’ve been blessed to work with over the decades.
LH: Where does Ron Whitehead go from here?
RW: Onward!
Editor’s note: Crow and Outlaw: New and Selected Works (2025) is published by Keeping the Flame Alive Press. On a Feather of Light: New & Selected Poems (2025) is published by Pennington Press. Both are available on Amazon and through all good bookstores.
See also: ‘Interview #41: Ron Whitehead, Part One’, July 23rd, 2025
About the interviewer: Leon Horton is a UK-based countercultural writer, interviewer, and editor. He is the editor of the acclaimed essay/memoir collection Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet (Roadside Press, 2024), and interviewed author Victor Bockris for The Burroughs-Warhol Connection (Beatdom Books, 2024). His essays and interviews have been published by Beatdom, Rock and the Beat Generation, International Times and Beat Scene.
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