Richard
Meier
Home of Richard Meier, poet & author of Search Party, Misadventure and After the Miracle.
After the Miracle
published 2nd October 2025 by HappenStance
This new collection, After the Miracle, picks up where my earlier books left off - exploring quiet moments, inner shifts, and the emotional texture of what happens when things change.
The book contains a short sequence of poems about my mother, and dementia. A tribute to her, I hope, despite the tragedy of the condition. There's also a sequence of poems inspired by the great Japanese poet Ishakawa Takuboku. I marvel at his focus and concision, and his humanity, and my poems are an attempt to capture something of his art.
If After the Miracle is about anything, it isn’t spectacle but how we live with what we’ve been given, or what we’ve lost. I hope readers find something in it that resonates, especially in those in-between moments where we’re asked to keep going without knowing quite how.
Search Party
published 21st March 2019 by Picador
The poems in Search Party explore moments just out of reach, memories blurred, stories half-heard, and the small, often overlooked details that shape our understanding of the world.
Many of the poems in this collection explore attempts to repair severed connections, or to forge links never properly established: from a child’s reaction to being denied a responsive gaze, to a footballer’s sublime (if optimistic) pass to a teammate – these poems address the nature of the distances between us.
Misadventure
published 29th March 2012 by Picador
Misadventure is book about what we learn and what we refuse to learn. And about all the hope and hopelessness lying just below the surface of things, in our rooms, tables, coats and gardens. The book also contains a sequence of poems about fatherhood.
I'd like to hope that Misadventure, my first collection, holds space for the complexities of human emotion; grief, regret, hope, and resilience. And that through its often quiet and tender address, it offers readers a sense of shared vulnerability and an invitation to reflect on their own journeys through life’s unpredictable terrain.
“Richard Meier gives voice to the thoughts that grip our minds and won't let go. His quiet contemplations become louder with each re-reading.”
Reviews
“These poems wear their mastery of technique lightly. Rarely showy, they land with precision and panache. It take courage and skill to write like this.”
“One of those rare books that will cheer without patronising, and show you how to speak past grief and silence while still holding all that grief and all that silence.”