Rich Uridge

Rich Uridge

Training company boss by day. Poet and a whole heap of other things by night. Plus the son of a mother who was killed in a care home while living with dementia.

Rhayader Reveille

The Castle Hotel and war memorial Rhayader

Midnight strikes on the memorial clockA flame throwing dragon is guarding the flockWhile a gunpowder fog glistens and glosses The uniform slates and the uniform mosses. For God and for Country. Lest we forget. A window on North Street turned aquarium greenWhere a…

Dick’s Out or Wretched Urine

Photo of Richard Uridge at BBC News desk

Tradition has it that when you retire from or leave the BBC your colleagues produce a light-hearted video to mark the occasion. And so it was when I left BBC Pebble Mill’s Midlands Today in 1995. Watch out for wonderful…

Swift

First south and west, then north and east, I quarter up the sky.I’m watching for your sickle wings to scythe across my eye. I look, I look, then look again and listen for your scream.But bar the clap of pigeon…

Death is only the beginning

A photo of mum at the helm on a family boating holiday

I’m not a big fan of anniversaries. The ones you want to forget, you remember. The ones you want to remember, you forget.  And so it was I found myself wide awake early this morning exactly a year to the…

From journalist to poet

The “words on a line” world premiere Yup, calling it a world premiere may sound hyperbolic. But, technically at least, it happens to be true… So here I am in full flow (rapture the photographer, Fabio Barry, called it) belting…

The hare

A little loose. Like a soft toy sewn on where it’s lost it’s stuffing. Magpies showing zero respect You sketched our field with straight line speed. Sent my blood coursing, bounding. The hearts’ pounding now stopped. In a beat. A…

Words on a line

One way or another I’ve been writing for a living for more than 40 years – first as a cub newspaper reporter on the Reading Chronicle; then as a journalist and broadcaster for the BBC; and now as a budding…

Coronation

Union flags and bunting. The Kings Head. A telly on the wall And a row of mugs Raising glasses. Bottoms up, no shilling (coronation bitter £4 a pint) But press ganged by the Daily Mail All the same. Toasting two…