Richard Conway Jackson, a dear friend and longtime contributor to this blog, died in his home in Lake Los Angeles on December 1, at the age of 66.

Richard and his wife Vanity with our family at the Whately Inn for my 50th birthday in 2022.

Richard was a self-taught poet, tattoo artist, and car mechanic. He was working on an autobiographical novel about growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood in the Los Angeles area. I greatly enjoyed reading the first section of this funny and hair-raising saga of his adventures with his siblings. Richard took every opportunity to mentor at-risk youth so that they might avoid the mistakes that had landed him in prison. Introspective and articulate, he shared books with other inmates and helped them write their appeals. He created the cover art for my two poetry chapbooks, Swallow (Amsterdam Press, 2009) and Barbie at 50 (Cervena Barva Press, 2010), and Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s poetry collection Imperfect Echoes (2015).

A practitioner of the Norse neo-pagan religion Ásatrú, Richard had a warrior’s heart, always protecting and encouraging those he cared about, no matter how dire his own circumstances. Among his many handmade gifts to me were an altar cloth hand-drawn with Celtic knots and a set of rune stones. His letters kept my spirits up during our difficult journey to adopt a child. He loved our son’s independent spirit and mechanical inventiveness, and sent him great presents such as a buildable model of a V-8 engine. We often talked about sending Shane out to learn auto repair from him as a teenager, but we never had that chance.

Richard with Adam and Shane and a pal from the V.A. at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, February 2023.

We first connected in 2006 when he found an ad for our Winning Writers website in a magazine and mailed me a letter with some poems. He was serving 25-to-life in the California prison system for receiving a stolen motorcycle, due to the harsh three-strikes sentencing law in effect at the time. Thanks to a voter referendum in 2012, the sentencing law was retroactively repealed for nonviolent offenders like Richard…but the state made him wait another nine years for his freedom by constantly postponing his early release hearing.

When we met in person for the first time in 2022, we thought we’d gotten our miracle. He had married a wonderful woman, reconnected with his daughters and grandchildren, and started an auto repair shop, just as he had always planned. Tragically, right around Thanksgiving of that year, he and Vanity were in a terrible accident when the car in front of them turned left without signaling on the highway. She was killed and he lost his leg.

With the help of his daughters, Richard bravely tried to continue his business, but working on cars was physically challenging for a man in his 60s with a disability. In a move worthy of Javert from Les Miz, the state of California then decided to pursue criminal charges against him for the accident that had destroyed his future. We got him a lawyer who helped him receive a sentence of community service, still no easy task when he lived hours away from the food pantry where they assigned him to work.

Though financially struggling, he sounded well-supported by loved ones when I last spoke to him on his birthday this June. He got joy from his pet dog and piglets, and was excited about a new grandchild on the way.

I wish I had reached out to him more in the intervening months. The regular rhythm of our letters when he was inside had given way to intermittent texts and phone calls. Like a lot of folks who are incarcerated for decades, he might have been overwhelmed by suddenly having to create structure for his life. Simply trying to keep the lights on left him no time for the creative writing, reading, and artwork that had sustained him in prison.

Early this month, I learned of his passing from a Facebook post from his sister in Tennessee. I messaged her to get her number and we spoke for a long time. The family hadn’t wanted me to find out that way, but they didn’t have my contact information. His sister told me amazing stories about the hardships they’d suffered as kids and what a great protective big brother Richard had been. The exact cause of death isn’t yet known. She said she thought he “just gave up.”

The family has started a GoFundMe to pay for Richard’s funeral expenses. If you’ve been touched by his poetry that I’ve shared on this blog over the years, please consider helping them out.

Having fun with the art at Mass MoCA in 2022.