Writing requires regular practice. A writer’s tools range from laptops to classic pen and paper. For teacher and poet Randy Koch, even a piece of brown Kraft paper – similar to what tortillas de maíz are wrapped in – can serve as a medium. Last March, at a Poetry Day event at Treviño-Uribe Ranch in San Ygnacio, he held such a piece of paper while reciting his poem, “No Man’s Land.”
Koch has long strived to follow the discipline he learned from writer Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones: “My rule is to finish a notebook a month… my ideal is to write every day.”
By the time he moved to Laredo in 1997, he carried with him a nine-inch stack of notebooks – written in Minnesota, where he had lived with his daughter, Mary. That year, he accepted a job at Laredo Community College to teach composition, creative writing, and developmental writing.
Koch recalled that the bicultural encounter was at first a bit of a shock. Some of his students were learning English as a second language, which challenged him to listen more closely, to hear how accent and cadence shape meaning. For young writers, he explained, the temptation was to write only in first person, which older, more experienced writers may see as a mistake born from a lack of experience – not only in writing, but in life. His task was to guide students beyond their own sightlines.
One of his classroom exercises was to ask students to step into the voice of a conquistador and write a poem as if in their final moments on earth. That experiment remained with him, eventually guiding Koch toward his first collection, This Splintered Horse, in which he adopted voices that moved beyond his own.
In 2002 he became the director of the TAMIU Writing Center, which was established to help students become better writers.
Koch said that observation is at the core of writing. He recalled living in New York in 2008, where he would ride the subway, watch people and imagine their stories. For young writers, he recommends the exercise of describing people – their clothes, gestures, differences – as a way of training the eye and ear, almost like practicing semiotics.
These days, Koch is reading Dean Young’s poetry, which inspires him to write less logically and more abstractly, breaking the habits of a composition teacher. He tries to follow illogical, unexpected directions in his drafts and avoids rereading until his notebook is full. His revisions, however, are rigorous: he re-reads each piece at least six times, always aloud, to catch rhythm, sound, and repetition. The oral quality matters to him. As he explained this, I contrasted it with my own method – sometimes recording spoken words first before shaping them into writing.
Koch’s commitment to writing extends beyond the classroom. In 2000, he began a monthly column for LareDOS, its content often connected to his classroom experiences, the Writing Center, and TAMIU’s South Texas Writing Project.
Though he left Laredo in 2007 to complete an MFA in Poetry at the University of Wyoming, Koch continued writing for LareDOS. A recent column, titled “Manicfesto,” political in nature, is one of the finest examples of his creativity – lyrical, cadent, purposeful, moving sometimes in swells and then to a subtle pause to ensure the reader has come up for air.
He has recently returned to Laredo, collaborating with local writers like Raquel Valle Senties, editing work for friends, and very much at work in the mechanics of verbs.
Koch’s fascination with words is meticulous. He keeps notebooks filled with favorite terms, often copied from the dictionary – three pages a day – paying special attention to the Anglo-Saxon roots of words. He marvels that some English words trace back to Aztec or Mexican origins. In his admiration for writers like Cormac McCarthy and Roberto Bolaño, he notes how they stretch language, weaving in Spanish, violence, and the complexities of border life.
Koch’s list of favorite authors is long and varied: Dean Young, McCarthy, Rebecca Solnit, Carolyn Forché, Joan Didion, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, and Roberto Bolaño. He especially admires Forché’s poetry collection, The Country Between Us and her memoir, What You Have Heard Is True.
Not all writers, he points out, are natural storytellers. Koch has often struggled with short stories, particularly with endings, which is part of what drew him toward poetry. Poetry, he said, feels more manageable, especially the sonnet form, which offers structure and a natural stopping point. At its heart, poetry is musical to him – a vibration and rhythm of words that matter even beyond meaning. Writers, he insists, should not force language, but should follow where it leads, letting sound, rhyme, and alliteration open unexpected directions.
He remembers the first time he felt like a “real writer.” In a Minnesota fiction class, his professor Terry Davis, a published author, praised his draft and said he was doing what writers truly do. That validation made the possibility real.
When Randy Koch and I met, it was on a summer Saturday afternoon in downtown Laredo, seated on a bench in San Agustín Plaza. As he spoke, we were surrounded by the layered sounds of the border: the chatter of families, the shuffle of people crossing the bridge, the rustle of grocery bags and backpacks. It struck me then that there was no better setting to hear his reflections about writing and the border – eclectic, imperfect, and perfectly alive.
Our conversation ended with mutual excitement. He said he looked forward to seeing what I would write. I, meanwhile, left with enough material for a good story – and the sense that a follow-up would surely follow.
(Nuevo Laredense Seyde García is a human resources professional in international trade and logistics. She lends her support to the arts in both Laredos in numerous ways, among them by writing about exhibits and artists. She can be reached at seydeg91@gmail.com.)
