Graeme Richardson
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ravoon.bsky.social
Graeme Richardson
@ravoon.bsky.social
990 followers 210 following 580 posts
Poetry Critic for the Sunday Times. Anglican Priest. Poetry Collection, "Dirt Rich", out from Carcanet in January 2026. TLS contributor since 2010. All views very much my own.
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ravoon.bsky.social
This is a lovely thing - from @rorywaterman.bsky.social in the latest terrific @badlilies.bsky.social
February 13, 2026 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
nibus.bsky.social
Some key topics covered in @fortrenn.bsky.social's 1949 Gaelic phrasebook
✅️ dirty forrin sandwiches
✅️ the unhelpfulness of moccasins
✅️ gruel/butter etiquette
✅️ gurnet v. dogfish
What the Saxon calls sandwiches are here What kind are they? Hand me over those moccasins They will not help you much They are like a singed cat I shall take a mouthful of hot gruel with butter in it Go to your bed first The gurnet is plentiful to-day It is not so plentiful as the dogfish
February 12, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social
Yeats on Synge, 1909. Astonishingly powerful.
February 10, 2026 at 5:33 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
Seems legit
February 9, 2026 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
rorywaterman.bsky.social
My new book, exploring folk tales in Lincolnshire, is now available for pre-order! Publication: April 2026.

fiveleaves.co.uk/product/devi...
February 9, 2026 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
jntod.bsky.social
I wrote about Patience Strong, almost certainly the best-selling English poet of the twentieth century, who wrote six poems a week for the Daily Mirror (all on a Monday morning) as well as a hit song, greeting cards and calendars, and whose print runs were in the 100,000s
After a Night in Camelot and Arden
The life of Patience Strong, England's best-selling modern poet
substack.com
February 8, 2026 at 9:51 AM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
mathewlyons.bsky.social
I've been reading & rereading @ravoon.bsky.social's debut Dirt Rich the last couple of weeks. It's the best new collection I've read in a very long time. It reclaims the techniques of Auden and MacNeice for the 21st century, while mining layers of memory – personal. familial, social – …
February 7, 2026 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social
OCEAN'S FOUR: merely a hop, skip and a lengthy jump away from Leith's Ocean Terminal. Not a heist but a quest, or maybe even a bris (ouch, at my age). Yes, it is the Edinburgh launch for my debut collection, Little Griefs, out next month! www.eventbrite.com/e/little-gri...
Little Griefs by Andrew Neilson
Come to celebrate the launch of Andrew Neilson’s debut collection, Little Griefs!
www.eventbrite.com
February 6, 2026 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
badlilies.bsky.social
Our co-florist @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social has written a guest post for @northseapoets.bsky.social on Auden and 'Imaginary Friends' northseapoets.substack.com/p/audens-ima...
Auden's 'Imaginary Friends'
NSP Guest Post! Andrew Neilson on how the literati cope as Rome falls
northseapoets.substack.com
February 6, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
ianduhig.bsky.social
I posted elsewhere about a lady in one of my Leeds Irish Health and Homes workshops who wrote 'I've had dementia / for as long as I can remember'. It came back to me reading @ravoon.bsky.social's tremendous debut 'Dirt Rich', full of technically brilliant, emotionally-devastating work like this:
February 5, 2026 at 1:42 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
I should point out that not all the poems in my book are this rude
betarish.bsky.social Rishi Dastidar @betarish.bsky.social · 9d
Spent a few hours with @ravoon.bsky.social's fab 'Dirt Rich' last night. He lightly and lovingly provides an anatomy of what we might pretentiously call England Profound. It put me in mind of JL Carr's 'A Month in the Country', a very good thing. Oh and funny too, like so:
EARTHBOUND AND DOWN The Challenger Disaster hit our playground in a shower of reprehensible jokes: NASA stands for 'Need Another Seven Astronauts'. What's a spaceman's favourite drink? Seven Up. Same as Snow White, said Danny Speed. He and his older brother Craig were genius engineers of the winter ice-slide, buffing and polishing from just after dawn, a smear of Vicks Vaporub over the frosty schoolyard. No shoes with a grip or ridged sole allowed. You scrambled hard then froze with the ice, stillness carrying you further and faster than movement ever could. Grounded flight. Adults wanted unearthly beauty but to me it was humdrum: Mozart's 'Ave Verum' was something I'd rehearse as I plunged on my Raleigh Milk Race down Berry Hill Road. I wanted the opposite: I was asking the earth. Eating a girl out, Craig once said, was to slip into warmed-up Angel Delight, almost unbelievably frictionless, the perfect slide. My lunchbox full of tongue-sandwiches, I hid them in gorse and watched them rot, the same bush that yielded Readers' Wives, find of the century, pages stuck together. Grey fur grew on the lolling, folded meat. Much later, Danny went down for dealing: whizz, mostly - amphetamines - his surname meaning he made it to the national news. I saw it. He got years. We all got years.
February 4, 2026 at 11:09 AM
ravoon.bsky.social
A last call for this! Do sign up.
carcanet.bsky.social Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 16d
Join us online to launch 'Dirt Rich' by Graeme Richardson on Tuesday 3 February at 7pm BST! 💻📖

The event will be hosted by Jermey Noel-Tod and will feature reading and discussion, alongside time for audience questions.

More information and tickets here:🎟️
www.carcanet.co.uk/events/dirt-...
Dirt Rich: Carcanet Online Launch - Carcanet Press
Join us online to celebrate the launch of Dirt Rich by Graeme Richardson. The event will be hosted by Jeremy Noel-Tod.
www.carcanet.co.uk
February 3, 2026 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
shhomeplace.bsky.social
Join us for an evening of conversation and music with Neil Hegarty and Iarla Ó Lionáird to celebrate the publication of Nicholas Allen’s Late Heaney.

📅 Saturday 28th February
⏰ 7.30pm
🎟️£15

Secure your tickets here > tinyurl.com/4k4e7avx

@neilhegarty.bsky.social @dedalusdenaries.bsky.social
February 2, 2026 at 10:11 AM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
mssgoodwin.bsky.social
Thanks @poetrysociety.org.uk for the new issue of Poetry Review. Featuring a fabulous new poem by @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social
January 27, 2026 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
ravoon.bsky.social
This - gulp - is in the paper on Sunday - I'm very grateful to the editors - www.thetimes.com/culture/book...
The 3 rules for writing great poems — by our poetry critic
Graeme Richardson waited until he was 50 to publish his first poetry collection, Dirt Rich. He explains how he fell in love with language as a Nottinghamshire choir boy
www.thetimes.com
January 28, 2026 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
notrockyhorror.bsky.social
Thanks to @andotherpoems.bsky.social for publishing this late last year - sharing in time for tomorrow’s hopefully less intense moon!
God’s own goth orb, good or not - old gong, worn tooth, gloom-bowl, spook glow of rooms long lost - drop by slow, doomy drop looms low on top of Oslo
January 31, 2026 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
charlieconnelly.bsky.social
I love this B.H. Fairchild poem so much.
OFTEN THE DYING ASK FOR A MAP So when Locie, embraced by the great softness of bed #12, her late blizzard of silver hair fanning out beneath head and shoulders, asked for one in plaintive, almost desperate tones, I went out to my car and brought back my old, frayed roadmap of Kansas, and she followed the unfolding as if it in itself were a miracle, and then held it over her head, scanning the red interstates and blue country roads without apparent method or intent but smiling her morphined grand smile of awe and wonder within an air of childhood surprise and overwhelming acceptance. Because here it was—the way there, or here, or out or over or in, and here, sweetie, let me hold it for you, let me hold... and her trembling index finger knows no certain path but wanders through the Flint Hills toward Cottonwood Falls, then darts up toward Ossawatomie, and she can smell the new wheat, its dark green deep as the jade of the necklace her husband brought home from the war in the Pacific. And now as she crosses the Kaw River, she sees a young woman standing beneath the moon in a In Kansas, and wondering, what will I be? Who will I marry? Where will we live? Will I have children? And if, at the end, I am lost, how will I find my way home?
January 31, 2026 at 7:17 AM
ravoon.bsky.social
I'm thrilled with this review by Harry Speirs - really perceptive and insightful - www.indiependent.co.uk/poetry-revie...
Poetry Review: Dirt Rich // Graeme Richardson  : The Indiependent
Harry Spiers reviews the debut collection from The Sunday Times poetry critic Graeme Richardson
www.indiependent.co.uk
January 31, 2026 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
johnmelhughes.bsky.social
Peter McDonald's review of Geoffrey Hill's Collected Poems in a 1987 issue of North Magazine.
January 30, 2026 at 1:53 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
This - gulp - is in the paper on Sunday - I'm very grateful to the editors - www.thetimes.com/culture/book...
The 3 rules for writing great poems — by our poetry critic
Graeme Richardson waited until he was 50 to publish his first poetry collection, Dirt Rich. He explains how he fell in love with language as a Nottinghamshire choir boy
www.thetimes.com
January 28, 2026 at 8:04 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
Outraged by the first sentence here and the author's ignorance of @steveeely.bsky.social
www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/176...
Squelch and Slap, Chug and Slug
Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.
www.poetryfoundation.org
January 28, 2026 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Graeme Richardson
brucearthur.bsky.social
I almost appreciate how Trump has exposed how vacant every single high profile conservative belief was: free speech, states’ rights, letting the market decide, NATO, the right to bear arms, democracy, all of it. It’s been an empty, malicious political project for decades and decades now
rickperlstein.bsky.social Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19d
Folks have been noting the creepiness of this NRA statement on the Minneapolis murder that DOESN'T affirm Alex Pretti's right to have a gun at a protest, instead blaming "radical progressive politicians lie Tim Walz" who have "incited violence against law enforcement officers" for his death....
January 25, 2026 at 8:27 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
Each of the survivors was given a ten-shilling note and a packet of cigarettes
rnshiplosses.bsky.social RN ship losses @rnshiplosses.bsky.social · 19d
25 Jan 1917 // Armed merchant cruiser HMS Laurentic (ex White Star SS Laurentic) was sunk by German mines north-west of Ireland. All 475 on board were evacuated safely but spent many hours in lifeboats, during which 354 died of exposure. (Imperial War Museum Q 50278) #RoyalNavy #WW1 #NavalHistory
White Star liner SS Laurentic in an undated photograph, port side profile view, at anchor with the shore and buildings visible in the background. She was sunk north-west of Ireland by German mines on 25 January 1917 (original caption to this photograph gives the date incorrectly as 23 January 1917) while in Royal Navy service as HMS Laurentic. Imperial War Museum image: Q 50278.
January 25, 2026 at 5:46 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
Do join JN-T and me for this Zoom launch. Dress-code: naked from the waist down 👍
carcanet.bsky.social Carcanet Press @carcanet.bsky.social · 22d
Join us online to launch 'Dirt Rich' by Graeme Richardson on Tuesday 3 February at 7pm BST! 💻📖

The event will be hosted by Jermey Noel-Tod and will feature reading and discussion, alongside time for audience questions.

More information and tickets here:🎟️
www.carcanet.co.uk/events/dirt-...
Dirt Rich: Carcanet Online Launch - Carcanet Press
Join us online to celebrate the launch of Dirt Rich by Graeme Richardson. The event will be hosted by Jeremy Noel-Tod.
www.carcanet.co.uk
January 23, 2026 at 2:45 PM
ravoon.bsky.social
Rachel Curzon is consistently good, I think -
thelondonmagazine.bsky.social The London Magazine @thelondonmagazine.bsky.social · 23d
‘The Erymanthian Boar’, one of two poems by Rachel Curzon in our December / January issue – now on sale for only £6.95.

For more poetry like this, order the latest issue: thelondonmagazine.org/product/curr...
January 23, 2026 at 9:59 AM