The New York Times' ArmChair Traveler, Richard Woodward, is leaving behind the recumbent comfort of his La-z-boy and travel section column for a trip to the Wood River Valley.
It's not work, per se, that brings this accomplished journalist to Ketchum, but a chance to visit Idaho and offer an informal presentation on Billy Collins, the two term poet laureate (2001-2003) and Woodward's close friend.
Woodward's presentation, at 6 p.m. March 16 in The Community Library, in Ketchum, will focus mainly on his 2003 film, "Billy Collins: On the Road with the Poet Laureate." Woodward completed the documentary, his second, for the Checkerboard Film Foundation, an organization dedicated to documentary films about living American artists.
For Woodward, endeavoring to make a second film was nothing short of hard labor.
"After the misery of making the first film and raising money (for it), I swore I would never do it again," he said.
Woodward's first film was a documentary on John Szarkowski, the director and head curator for the Museum of Modern Art's photography department.
Film was a departure for Woodward, a journalist who had long been developing a resume replete with the finest publications in journalism.
His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, for which he has been writing consistently for the past 20 years. He has written five cover stories and numerous features for the magazine and has been a contributor to the Times' Sunday Arts and Leisure section, where he began as a jazz critic, for 25 years.
It was Collins, though, that had Woodward moving behind the camera lens. The former poet laureate is immensely popular and regularly published by Poetry as well as more general outlets, such as the New Yorker.
"He is highly respected by his peers, far and away one of the most popular poets, but also enormously funny," Woodward said of Collins.
"He hates the word accessible, but he is a poet you feel you could share a drink with."
And so, Woodward joined Collins in the most natural setting for a contemporary poet: on the road. Unlike the idling sages of yore, today's poets must be nimble and able to travel widely from specialized audience to specialized audience.
Woodward's film joins Collins on trips to his office at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., to a small college in Pennsylvania where he delivers one of many readings.
"He travels constantly--Billy (Collins) is probably the only poet in the country who can make his living from readings and book sales," which Woodward attributes to his staggering—by poetry standards—popularity.
Meanwhile, Woodward's work can regularly be found in the pages of The New York Times. On March 12, the Times will run a piece he has recently completed on Paris libraries. In coming weeks, he will also present a multi-media slideshow called "Las Vegas on the Cheap," on The New York Times website.
