Rick Dove

Biography

Once voted “most likely to start the revolution” Rick is a queer and neurodivergent poet and activist from South West London. Born in the socialist utopia of Tooting at the end of Generation X, Rick has witnessed the effects of both increasing multiculturalism and gentrification on the capital, and as such, his work reflects on both societal and personal change and how these two cardinal forces interact as we grow. Exploring themes of social justice, philosophy, and identity, and drawing on science fact and fiction, folklore, and mythology (with no small measure of mischief and provocation), Rick interrogates the liminal spaces that define our common humanity. Arriving on the spoken word scene in 2015, Rick has performed across the UK and internationally, with performance credits including: The Wandsworth Arts Fringe (2018 & 2019), the Egham Festival of Music, the Edinburgh Fringe (2018 & 2022), Crystal Palace International Festival, Enrich Festival, the ClitArt Festival, Shambala Festival, and a yearlong residency at The Chocolate Poetry Club. Rick’s work has also been published widely, including: Spoken word albums with Nymphs & Thugs; in journals including, Bunbury Magazine, Soapbox & Untitled Writers; and in anthologies published by Arachne Press, Nine Pens Press, and Tonic Sta Press. In 2022, Rick was also commissioned to produce work for the HouseFound Symposium (for the Level Centre) and as part of the Raze Collective's 2022 Let Us Raze You Cohort. Dubbed "one to watch" by TS Eliot Prize winner Roger Robinson, Rick’s debut full collection, Tales From the Other Box, was published in August 2020 by Burning Eye and Rick was crowned the Hammer & Tongue UK Poetry Slam Champion at the Royal Albert Hall on 4th July 2021. Equally at home on a stage, or a page, or a march, Rick has a vision of a fairer world and he wants to take you with him.

Lucozade

August 1997 is learning how orange can mean the air is wet, bloodied, and jaundiced, a smeared interior monologue spluttering for breath, a belching disintegration, acrid, but hiding in the natural depressions of a long hot city. Cheating sleep with chemical sugars and sweetened endorphins, will spawn an undead man walking, a Wimbledon Odeon graveyard shift, a precarious shuffle, collapse it all under a stubborn memory. Fade. Radiohead on the Pyramid Stage. Soaked for three days straight. Hooked to polythene baggies, fluids in PICC lines, Moxifloxacin. Learning pneumonia can be complex. A bottle of sunrise at my bedside.

Matryoshka

That feeling of déjà vu you are having, is your consciousness being tickled by a quantum supercomputer running a simulation of this outbreak in the near future That feeling of déjà vu you are having, is the realisation that this is the simulation and that you died years ago That feeling of déjà vu you are having, is the infinite symmetries of scale and fractal repetition of a simulation of a simulation of a simulation having this same thought That feeling of déjà vu you are having is n=n+1

Counterpoint

Shush, she says, with slip of tongue and trip of sighs, Puffed through pursed lips, come high, to bate with this, Every silence has music, and this is mine As maddening space, now grows apace like Kisses rained upon the face in manic tryst, Shush, she says, with slip of tongue and trip of sighs, Too much, too soon to speak of, too moved am I, Hearing inferred words under breath amiss, Every silence has music, and this is mine. In contortion’s convoluted thrall divine, Nude in assonance so asinine we twist, Shush, she says, with slip of tongue and trip of sighs, All words must leave you now her breathy lullaby Nothingness is where we reside, in bliss Every silence has music, and this is mine, Made crazed crescendo tantric tied, Unified passions leave our meanings stripped, Shush, she says, with slip of tongue and trip of sighs, Every silence has music, and this is mine

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.