Richard Woolmer

Richard Woolmer

Richard Woolmer was born in the Himalayas in pre-partition India (1946), lived in Lahore, Pakistan as a child and was sent back to school in England aged eight. After studying History at Oxford he taught in Pakistan and

England for 35 years. His first published work in 1970 was a series of four travel articles in the Portsmouth Evening News based on wanderings in the Americas. Another publication was a history of Holyport and local cricket in

Berkshire (now in the library at Lord's). He has had a number of poems published by the Poetic Republic (two being short listed for prizes) and also several poems in South poetry magazine as well as Home Counties Poets and Rhyme and Reason.

For the past ten years he has been a member of Temys Poets. For several years he has been a regular reviewer for South magazine.

Speaking to Crows

"Speaking to Crows" by Richard Woolmer
15cm x2 1mm, 55 pages
RRP £8.00

Speaking to Crows is Richard Woolmer's debut collection, published in 2019. Richard's gentle humour and irony illuminate issues and episodes in his own life and that of historical figures and issues with a light, very English touch.

Patrick B. Osada reviews Speaking to Crows in SOUTH Poetry Magazine:

For many years, I have been a member of the same poetry group as Richard Woolmer. It has been a delight and a privilege to have witnessed the birth of many of the poems contained in this, his first collection. The themes found in Speaking to Crows are eclectic and diverse — from childhood to an absent-minded old age:
“Why am I here?” / he would ask / not just in a philosophical way / but because he could not remember / why he had come upstairs.
                                                                          (The End of the Road).

There are also poems about memorial poppies, Nagasaki; distant galaxies and the contemporary world of “spin” :
Today we have shuffling of words. Yesterday / we had daily truth. And tomorrow morning /                        we shall have what they call post truth. But today, / today we have shuffling of words.
                                                                              (Shuffling Of Words)

Much of the book is set somewhere between dream and reality — a world seen through a prism of benign, surreal humour, reminiscent of the best Lear and Carroll. Here we meet an assortment of characters, ranging from an English King to President Trump :
He was big, / a mad hatter of a man / with small inquisitive hands / living in a room full of oxymorons / and non sequiturs / gold taps, ticking time bombs / and no books.
                                                                                      (Mock Turtle)

Elsewhere, rubbing shoulders, are the Rev. Spooner, ashes in an urn, a fan of an unfashionable football team, a TV weather girl and a besmirched statue... Prince Harry also puts in an appearance as does The Bayeux Tapestry and the notorious “Uritrottoir” of Paris.

This is a wonderful first collection introducing a unique new voice — I thoroughly recommend it!

Patrick B. Osada