Richard Osmond

About Richard Osmond

Richard Osmond was born in 1987. He works as a wild-food forager, searching for plants, fruits and fungi among the forests and hedgerows of Hertfordshire. He received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2017. His first collection, Useful Verses, was nominated for a Costa Book Award and won the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry’s First Collection prize in 2018. His second collection, Rock, Paper, Scissors – written in response to his direct experience of the terrorist attack on London Bridge on June 3rd 2017 – was published 13th June 2019. 

Richard’s recording was made along with the other winners of the Foyle Young Poet of the Year. Talking about the experience of winning the prize and making a recording for the Poetry Archive Richard said:

“I was recognised as a poet by the Foyle award before being recognised as one by anyone else, including myself. The award gave me permission to think of myself as a poet, which made it seem important and worthwhile to keep reading and writing. Things would have been very different without it.”