[Alex Pepple]

I've just learned that John Ridland has passed away, January 29, 2020. John was a friend and colleague--as he was also to many of you. I’ve just spoken to John’s widow, Muriel, who informed me that it was a very aggressive kind of cancer, as he was diagnosed with it only a couple of months ago. John was a poet and translator of the first order and I was honored and privileged to publish, through Able Muse Press, two important books of translation from him, from Middle English, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Pearl—both from the same anonymous Gawain poet. John was one of a kind. This is a great loss, and he’ll be truly missed. You can see a brief bio on John here.
...Alex

[Gregory Dowling]

I remember John from a critical seminar on Robert Frost that we both participated in at West Chester. I was then hoping to see him and Muriel the following year at the seminar we had on Hardy but he was unable to come. He was a very nice man and a good critic. Very sorry to hear this news.

[Julie Steiner]

Having a husband who swims daily, a daughter named Jennifer who went under the knife as a teen-aged girl, difficulty integrating my body into my concept of "me," and imperfect faith in prayer, I found much to relate to in this beautiful poem.

Swimming for Jeni
by John Ridland

Today I took my body in its skin
And walked it to the noon-hour swimming pool.
I whirled its arms about and tossed it in,
The air being colder than the water's cool.

Then for so many a hundred--thousand--yards
I churned it unrelenting back and forth.
While others on both sides of me as hard
Churned unrelenting also south and north.

We'd catch the air and hold it for a stroke
Of two or three--four, maybe five at most,--
Folding the water under like a cloak,
Wrapped in the health of which we drily boast.

We swam above deep water without fear,
Peering down through it where we could not go
Unless we took the water in for air
And who'd do that? Nobody there I know.

Meanwhile up north I know a teen-aged girl
Who's being admitted for another sort
Of exercise in which the churn and whirl
Are nimbly done in earnest, not in sport,

With icy knives that few of us have seen
But all would welcome for their cheery pain
If only they could cut the tumor clean
And scoop it out and make her whole again.

Dear Jeni, through that blinding habitat,
Maybe the light will meet you as you rise
And pull you out to breathe the air at that
Cold moment when the first star strikes your eyes,

And maybe not, in which case I will put
My body in its skin and swim for you,
And swim for you again, wrapped hand and foot,
There being nothing else that it can do.