Dick Westheimer
Biography
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio, his home for over fifty years(!) with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, the 2026 Third Wednesday Poetry Prize, the 2026 Poets in Defense of Science Poetry Prize, and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared in ONLY POEMS, Whale Road Review, Rattle, and One Art. He hosts the monthly Rattle Prompt Lines Community Reading and appears regularly on The Poetry Space podcast. Sales of his chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, published by SheilaNaGig, raised over $2,000 for Ukraine Trust Chain.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
In my poem “An American Jew Fails to Make Sense of the Carnage in Gaza” I write, “I can’t stop /crying—anymore than I can stop being a Jew” — which might be paraphrased “I can’t stop writing poems—anymore than I can stop being a Jew.” My Judaism, which some would describe as cultural/humanistic suffuses my life with ritual, with textual inquiry, with an obsession with questions (a la the Seder textual pedagogy) and a cultural history of outsider status. And while my parents were not familiar with the term, “Tikkun olam” was the currency traded at our dinner table growing up. My poetry is informed by all of these in equal measure—both directly as lines of text and my experience as an American Jew find their ways into my work—and indirectly as my values, historic memory, relationship with text, and outsider status (especially in rural southwest Ohio) make up who I am as a writer and member of the community of poets.
Published Works
A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022)
