Rick Dove

@rickdove.bsky.social

1375 Followers 681 Following

Poet | UK Poetry Slam Champion 2021 | Creative Writing Workshop Facilitator | Activist 🏳️‍🌈♿️ ☮️ | 🔗 https://linktr.ee/rickdove |

21 March 2026 at 13:26 the unknown has always existed and all that has changed in the vast arc of our timeline are the dissonances that allow us to accept it it used to be before sciences and empiricism phenomena made mysteries simply had a god, or a fairy or a djinn, within and we had patron spirits for every strange thing but now it is all spooky action at a distance, cosmic strings dark matter, and dark energy, the missing greater part of gravity, and how our alchemy of neurochemistry makes me miss you into such philosophy
Picture of Mari Lwyd “The Grey Mare” of Welsh Tradition, with the caption: “youre buying elf on the shelf surveillance capitalism for your children meanwhile the welsh have a folk tradition of getting bullied by a horse skeleton until you share resources.”
Overly dramatic photo of the Palace of Westminster with a shard of sunlight from glowering skies, hitting the Big Ben clock tower.
Cover of the Class Lines & Red Lines Poetry Anthology Pamphlet. The cover is sketch illustrated in red ink and depicts three people making placards out of a picket fence.
An embroidery in progress, with a motif of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the words “Eat the Rich” stitched in blue cursive.
Words at the Glitch, Featuring Rick Dove, Tuesday 11th March 2025, 7pm. Yellow wording on a navy background with a microphone in spotlight motifs
Photograph of a Victorian red brick building with gold lettering that reads “British Home and Hospital for Incurables”
A green box of Glenfiddich, SINGLE MALT SCOTCH WHISKY, on a writing desk in front of a laptop and Bluetooth keyboard.
A packet of Fraser’s Haggis (bought from Aldi) on a white kitchen counter and transparent placemat.
Nine blood test vials with various colour caps on a blue tray.
A selection of book spines (collections and anthologies that contain writing by Rick Dove). Visible spines (from Top to Bottom): Tales From The Other Box - Rick Dove Supervillain Origin Story - Rick Dove Joy//US: Poems of Queer Joy - Arachne Press Devastation Sons - Broken Sleep Books Where We Find Ourselves - Arachne Press Hair Raising Anthology - Nine Pens Spaces of Significance - Broken Sleep Books/Off The Chest Masculinity: An Anthology of Modern Voices - Broken Sleep Books London Spoken Word Anthology - Gug Press The Girl From Niue - Black in White
A McCarthy Era Leaflet Quote in Beige and Black: “Beware of Artists: They mix with all classes of society and are therefore the most dangerous”
Threads posts… crswaites writes: You sure artists should actively want corporate funding? Funding by people who give them ongoing money typically means there's some sort of trade off, which is why they normally call it a "job". To which probablepossible replies: Only fund autistic artists that don't know *how* to toe a corporate line even if they wanted to.
British Asian woman Saffiyah khan (left) dressed in a denim jacket over a black hoodie faces down english defence league (edl) protester wearing a black baseball cap with a defiant and mischievous grin on her face.
Cover of Devastation Songs, a dinosaur or dragon head rendered in a sketch of pink and black flames.
Schematic image of a dopamine molecule with text… “Congratulations you’ve scrolled so far you found the dopamine” And a reply: “About f*cking time”
Rick, an athletic clean shaven black man with a shaved head, is at a microphone wearing a black t-shirt that says “Aggravated Activist” (a reference to to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022… he is cupping is right ear with his right hand encouraging the crowd to shout *something* back
Train platform with train arriving in a blur. The poster on the passenger shelter reads: “Love Like A Poet”
The Starship Enterprise E approaching a pink corona with the words: “Much like the Federation, I too have lofty ideals and no money.”
Cover of Masculinity by Broken Sleep Books, a Mondrian stylised anatomically correct heart on a green background.
Rick, a clean shaven black man with a shaved head, and wearing a black polo neck, looking off to his right talking to someone out of shot, while seated and resting both hands on top of his cane.
Poem reads: REVOLUTIONARIES Every six days, some place somewhere is celebrating independence from here As in our streets, the people are being arrested for dissent, for being frogs who have dared notice the weather getting warmer, for being desperate enough to turn the gas off, to get off the fence, and refuse to pay rent to the fires still burning. And you and I, are snuggling undercover, as placards become petards, as the rhetoric spikes and ignites, the sky falls, and we take a pause to pirouette on a pillows edge, to turn to each other, and confess, I threw a brick once For we are old enough to remember the fall of Empire, and a curtain made of iron, So today, having started something, we lie in, knowing that there will be time before the dancing ends. We hold tight with each step, knowing, that if we must dance for our oppressors, then it should be a slow dance, to the beat of war drums, to show them the beauty in our threat, the danger of our love.
Poem reads: MIMESIS Camouflage has two primary purposes in nature: To avoid predation, and to lie in wait, an ambush hunter… And we remain top of our food chain, an apex predator, for those of us disguising, primarily do so, to hide from one another, or from someone in particular. At a formative age, one of our earliest games, Hide and Go Seek, Again, and again. Close your eyes, count to a hundred… Prey they never see you, this game never ends, In matching uniforms, matching intonations and prosody, masking tell-tale traits, sincerest forms of flattery, Until we crouch together, around the next corner behind the bricked wall, the tall privet hedge hearts racing and out of breath, Prey they never see you, this game never ends, Like, every poem, is a little bit sex, a little bit death. Blurring our edges, finding safety in numbers, Again, and again. Close your eyes, count to a hundred…