1st - Francis Browne Poetry Competition 2025

Allow me a small celebratory flourish. Absolutely delighted.

#IrishPoetry #PoetryCompetition #IrishLiterature #PoetsOfBluesky #FrancisBrowne

🏆 First Place - Francis Browne Poetry Competition 2025

"Departure Ballad" won. The poem about the night ferry from Belfast,
and thirty years of trying to translate
"if only" into another life.

My ode to everyone who ever left.

#IrishPoetry #PoetryCompetition #IrishLiterature #PoetsOfBluesky

Finalist — “Departure Ballad,” 2025 Frances Browne Poetry Competition! Grateful to the readers and festival team. Onward to Oct 10.
#Poetry #Shortlist #FrancesBrowne #Ireland

Honored that Departure Ballad made the Frances Browne shortlist. Grateful to the readers & festival team—see you in October. #Poetry #Shortlist #FrancesBrowne #IrishPoetry #PoetryCommunity

This is not just a memory of a day at the beach; it's a portrait of a childhood caught between the confines of a fractured city and the boundless possibility of the sea.

open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

As a child, I was the Belfast boy who taped a photo of Voyager 1 above his bunkbed. As a man, I became an engineer. Somewhere in between, I became a poet—haunted distance, signal, and survival.

substack.com/@ronaldcarso...

Honored that “Departure Ballad” made the Frances Browne longlist. From San Diego to Donegal—grateful for the bridges poems build.

#Poetry #Longlist #FrancesBrowne #IrishPoetry #PoetryCommunity

substack.com/@ronaldcarso...

substack.com/@ronaldcarso...

My meditation on childhood, memory, and the fleeting, precious nature of perfect moments.

I’ve just shared an audio reflection. I’d be honored if voices like @poetryireland.bsky.social, @bansheepress.bsky.social, @jesstraynor.bsky.social, @eatthestorms.com, @eoghanwalls.bsky.social & @sonyagildea.bsky.social could listen and leave a thought. Poetry, after all, is communal soil.

Heaney’s shadow is long. But shadows mean light exists.

I’ve just released a spoken-word reflection on Digging—not mimicry, but reverence. A moment from a Belfast classroom, exhaled decades later.

🎧 Listen here → open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

#Poetry #IrishVoices #SubstackAudio

She Moved Through the Fair

Not a reading. A return.

The first audio release from The Last Vowel—
a collection of Irish songs rewritten in the hush between generations.

🎧 Listen here:
open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

#AudioPoetry #IrishPoetry #SubstackReads

3 Books. 1 Signal.
Childhood wonder → orbital grief → the ache of return.
A former aerospace engineer turns the Voyager mission into a poetic memoir trilogy.

Voyager's 50th anniversary in 2027. "The Unified Trilogy" is coming soon.

#memoir #poetry #Voyager #STEM #literaryagent #nonfiction

Ronald Carson
Poet. Engineer.

@rcfieldnotes is where I trace what haunts and what echoes.

Debut collection The Last Vowel is now complete.
📖 [Publisher pitch in progress]

open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

#IrishPoetry #DebutPoet