SPEAKING TO CROWS by Richard Woolmer

 
ISBN 978-1-907435-77-1
148 x 210mm, 55 pages
£8.00 

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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 inBerkshire (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.

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