The Madhouse Poems of Richard Creech, a compilation of my eight gothic poetry chapbooks, is now available at Amazon. The book is 216 pages long and costs $12.99.

The Madhouse Poems contains the full text of XXX, The Phantasm of Despair, Sleepy Hollow, 1776, Old Tom’s Skull, Mr. Octopus, The Game of Death and Babbling Bones. The chapbooks span the period from 2000 to 2011. A few of the poems have been lightly revised since their first publication.

I am a rhyme and meter guy and am working within the poetic tradition of writers such as Poe, Blake and Beddoes. The old masters are still the best and their works remain important models for contemporary writing.

The “look inside” feature of the Amazon listing provides some sample poems from the collection.

“Loads of death in here.” —Star*Line

“A thin masterpiece.” —frisson: disconcerting verse (on Poems, later reissued as XXX)

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Have those hangovers started turning into withdrawal episodes? Fear not, Temperance Poems to Defeat Satan is also now available at Amazon. Don’t just buy a copy for yourself—send copies to any of your friends who might be in need. The book is 30 pages long and costs $6.99.

Temperance Poems to Defeat Satan reprints and in some cases revises the poems that were first published in the 2010 anthology I edited called Back to the Bottle.

This volume contains my own new versions of traditional temperance poems and song lyrics. Some of the texts I barely touched, while others I changed in a significant way. All of the sources I utilized were published during the 19th century.

Some sample poems from the collection are available from the Amazon listing.

The Madhouse Poems of Richard Creech and Temperance Poems to Defeat Satan are both included in the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays at Brown University.

A scientist utilizes an artificial language to communicate with a captive killer whale…what will he discover? Are killer whales more intelligent than human beings? Can a higher intelligence also be sinister and violent? And how far will a scientist go in his pursuit of greater understanding? These are some of the questions explored in the book.

Conversations with the Orca also includes a couple of my early attempts at writing poems (these are by the killer whale).

I have made some minor improvements to the manuscript, but this is essentially the novella as it existed in 1987. Don’t miss the opportunity to add this curio to your book collection. 136 pages, $12.99.

“The general public has unfortunately been led to believe that the killer whale possesses the approximate intelligence of a dog or a wolf but from a purely neurological perspective this simply cannot be the case. In fact the only conclusion that one could reasonably draw in view of the physical evidence is that the killer whale possesses an intelligence considerably more advanced than that of the human. I am well aware that such statements have the aura of the fantastic and the unbelievable about them, but the physical evidence is there and it is frankly irrefutable. The brain of the killer whale is much larger and many times heavier than that of the human but more importantly those portions of the brain which are known to correspond to the higher mental functions such as intuition and abstract thought are significantly more developed in the orca than in the human, both in terms of volume and in terms of the complexity of convolution found there.”

Geyer, Richard. “Beddoes to His Critic.” Newsletter of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society 14 (2010):
   n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “The Rack.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine ?.? (2008): 9.
Geyer, Richard. “The Bee.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.5 (2007): 14.
Geyer, Richard. “Dirge.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.6 (2007): 14.
Geyer, Richard. “Five Haiku.” Haiku Harvest: 2000-2006. Ed. Denis M. Garrison.
   Baltimore: Modern English Tanka Press, 2007. 130-1.
Geyer, Richard. “A Toast to Poe.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.6 (2007): 6.
Geyer, Richard. “No to Whitman. Real Dying.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.5 (2007): 5.
Geyer, Richard. “Whiskey at a Mirror.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.4 (2006): 19.
Geyer, Richard. “R.I.P.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.? (2005): 24.
Geyer, Richard. “A Winter Morning.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 12.? (2005): 6.
Geyer, Richard. “The Chime.” Candelabrum Poetry Magazine 11.? (2004): 7.
Geyer, Richard. “Old Tom’s Skull.” Journal of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society 10 (2004): 1.
Geyer, Richard. “The Reaper.” Yellow Bat Review 6 (2004): 9.
Geyer, Richard. “Cemetery-Song.” Journal of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society 9 (2003): 31.
Geyer, Richard. “Dirge.” Journal of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society 9 (2003): 31.
Geyer, Richard. “She Is Beautiful Now.” Nocturnal Lyric: Journal of the Bizarre 59 (2002): 31.
Geyer, Richard. “Five Haiku.” Haiku Noir 1.2 (2001): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “Mystery.” frisson: disconcerting verse 22 (2001): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “The Angel of Death.” Tucumcari Literary Review 105 (2000): 11.
Geyer, Richard. “The Bee.” Tucumcari Literary Review 102 (2000): 14.
Geyer, Richard. “Clean.” Second International Anthology on Paradoxism. Ed. Florentin Smarandache.
   N.p., Romania: Anotimp & Abbadabba, 2000. 53.
Geyer, Richard. “Death a Mirror.” Tucumcari Literary Review 104 (2000): 30.
Geyer, Richard. “The Dove.” Tucumcari Literary Review 103 (2000): 8.
Geyer, Richard. “Nocturne.” Nocturnal Lyric: Journal of the Bizarre 56 (2000): 15.
Geyer, Richard. “The Prisoner.” Tucumcari Literary Review 106 (2000): 26.
Geyer, Richard. “Reanimator.” frisson: disconcerting verse 18 (2000): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “The Rack.” frisson: disconcerting verse 14 (1999): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “The Suicide.” frisson: disconcerting verse 15 (1999): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “Arabesque.” frisson: disconcerting verse 9 (1998): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “Good Vibrations.” Nocturnal Lyric: Journal of the Bizarre 51 (1998): 32.
Geyer, Richard. “Lonely.” Nocturnal Lyric: Journal of the Bizarre 52 (1998): 3.
Geyer, Richard. “Sniper.” frisson: disconcerting verse 12 (1998): n. pag.
Geyer, Richard. “Uncertain.” frisson: disconcerting verse 8 (1997): n. pag.

I was born in Detroit in 1964 and attended the strange and wonderful Roeper School. I have a self-designed B.A. in English and Scandinavian Literature (1989) from the University of Minnesota and an M.I.L.S. (1990) from the University of Michigan, where I also studied Old English. I’ve been a librarian at a small liberal arts college in Michigan since 1991.

I’ve had poetry published in a number of periodicals, including Candelabrum Poetry Magazine (UK), Journal of the Thomas Lovell Beddoes Society (UK), and frisson: disconcerting verse (US), and I edited the poetry e-journal Contemporary Rhyme from 2004 to 2008.

I developed and maintain Phantom-Wooer: The Thomas Lovell Beddoes Website and I’ve published an academic article as well as a number of bibliographies on Beddoes. My biography has been included in recent editions of Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.

Contact: editor@contemporaryrhyme.com