“You Didn’t Leave Loudly” — A Conversation with Richard Howardson

The poet and storyteller on heartbreak, healing, and why poetry still matters

Richard Howardson is not your typical poet. He will be the first to tell you that. Before you call him an author, before you call him a poet, he wants you to call him a storyteller — and that distinction, he insists, changes everything about how he writes, and why.

His poetry collection, You Didn’t Leave Loudly, published by Notion Press, is now available across India and internationally on Amazon, Flipkart, and the Notion Press website. The book has already found a warm and enthusiastic reception from readers across the country — and it is easy to see why.

Your book is called You Didn’t Leave Loudly. That’s a striking title. What does it mean to you?

Most people think heartbreak looks like a door slamming. A fight. Someone walking out dramatically. But real heartbreak — the kind that actually stays with you — it’s quieter than that. It’s when someone slowly stops choosing you, and neither of you officially ends anything. You just… fade. The book is about that silence. The conversations that stopped. The plans that were quietly cancelled. The “almost-love” that never got a proper goodbye.

Why poetry? Why not prose or fiction?

Because poetry holds what prose cannot always contain. A poem can capture a feeling in eight lines that a chapter might struggle to express. But honestly, I didn’t sit down one day and say, “I will write poetry.” The stories came first. The feelings came first. Poetry was just the form they naturally took.

You describe yourself as a storyteller first. What does that mean in the context of a poetry collection?

Every poem in this book is a story. It might be compressed, it might be told in fragments, but there is always a beginning, a moment, and a truth at the end. I am not interested in poetry that is beautiful but empty. I want the reader to finish a poem and feel like they just heard someone’s story — maybe even their own.

The language in your book is notably simple and accessible. Was that a deliberate choice?

Absolutely. I find it frustrating when people treat complex language as a sign of intelligence. If a reader has to open a dictionary every few lines, I have failed as a communicator. My readers should feel the poem, not decode it. Simple language is not lazy language — it is disciplined language. It takes more effort to say something true in ten simple words than in fifty complicated ones.

You work as a Corporate Trainer and Public Speaker at ITM Skills University, associated with ITM Business School in Kharghar. That’s a very different world from poetry. How do the two connect?

They connect more than people think. Whether I am on stage training professionals or whether I am writing a poem at midnight, I am doing the same thing — I am trying to make someone feel something, understand something, or see something differently. Communication is the thread that runs through everything I do. I joined ITM not just as a job. I genuinely believe in what they are building. In a system where a marksheet defines a student’s worth, ITM is doing something revolutionary by focusing on practical, real-world learning. That philosophy resonates deeply with me.

You also co-founded SpeakZone Academy in Navi Mumbai. Tell us about that.

SpeakZone is a communications and spoken English training institute at Koparkhairane that I started along with two of my closest friends and long-time colleagues, Peter Paul and Gaurav Vargante. We met when we all worked together at Times, and that shared experience became the foundation of a friendship and eventually a business. Currently, Peter and Gaurav are running the academy, and I have stepped back from the day-to-day operations — but I am proud of what we built together.

In the age of rap battles and reels, why should someone pick up a poetry book?

Because noise is everywhere, and silence is rare. Rap is brilliant, I respect it enormously — but poetry asks you to slow down. It asks you to sit with something. In a world that is moving faster every day, I think people are quietly hungry for that stillness. You Didn’t Leave Loudly is for anyone who has ever felt something they could not quite put into words. My job was to find those words for them.

You Didn’t Leave Loudly by Richard Howardson is available on Notion Press, Amazon, and Flipkart — in India and internationally.

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