Richard John Price (born 1966 in Reading, England) is a British poet, novelist, and translator. From 1988 to 2024 he was a librarian at the British Library, London.
Contents
Life
He grew up in Renfrewshire where he went to Kilmacolm Primary School, Houston Primary School, and Gryffe High School.
He studied at Napier College, in journalism, and graduated the University of Strathclyde in English and Librarianship, with a joint first.
He earned a PhD at University of Strathclyde.
Career
He has worked with artists in sculpture, digital art, artist's books and music. His collaborators include David Annand, Julie Johnstone, Simon Lewandowski, Karen Bleitz, Caroline Trettine and Ronald King.
He was a lyricist and vocalist in the musical projects Mirabeau and, later, The Loss Adjustors.
His translations include the Guillaume Apollinaire poems in Eftirs / Afters (with translations of other French modernists by Donny O'Rourke, Au Quai, 1996) and the Louise Labé poems in Lute Variations (Rack Press, 2005), the latter collected in Rays (Carcanet, 2009).
In the 1990s he co-edited the poetry magazines Gairfish (with W. N. Herbert), Verse (with Robert Crawford, Henry Hart, David Kinloch, and others) and Southfields (with Raymond Friel). At this time he also ran the poetry publisher Vennel Press with Leona Medlin, publishing books by W.N. Herbert, Elizabeth James, David Kinloch, Peter McCarey, Medlin and Price themselves, and others. He was one of the group associated with Informationist poetry, coining the phrase. He introduced Informationist ideas in 1991 in the magazine Interference and, later, in his introduction to the anthology of Informationist poetry Contraflow on the Superhighway, co-edited with Herbert (Gairfish and Southfields, 1994). In 1994 he successfully completed his PhD at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, on the novelist of the inter-war years Neil M. Gunn and his engagement with the tragic. Price's introduction to Gunn's work, The Fabulous Matter of Fact, had been published in 1991 by Edinburgh University Press. He currently edits the magazine Painted, spoken.
From 2003 to 2010 he was Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library, London, leading the curatorial team responsible for the UK printed books and periodicals collection from 1914 onwards as well as UK web archiving. He also curated exhibitions that included Ted Hughes: The Page is Printed (2004) and The Possibility of Poetry: From Migrant magazine to artists' books (2007). He has written on the history of the modern literary magazine in the United Kingdom, co-authoring with David Miller British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography of 'Little Magazines' (British Library, 2006). From 2010 to 2014 he was the Head of Content and Research Strategy at the Library, before becoming the first Head of Contemporary British Collections there, a department devoted to print, digital, manuscripts and sound.
Awards and Shortlistings
1987 Winner, Keith Wright Memorial Prize for Poetry, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
1988 Winner, Keith Wright Memorial Prize for Poetry, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
1988 Winner, STV Creative Writing Prize, Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde
1997 Paul Hamlyn Poetry Award, Runner Up for pamphlet Hand Held
2005 Forward Felix Dennis First Collection Prize (shortlist) for Lucky Day
2005 Whitbread Poetry Book of the Year (shortlist) for Lucky Day
2005 Jerwood/Aldeburgh First Collection Prize (shortlist) for Lucky Day
2008 Scottish Arts Council Poetry Book of the Year Award (shortlist) for Greenfields
2010 Scottish Arts Council Poetry Book of the Year Award (shortlist) for Rays
2013 Winner, Creative Scotland SMIT Poetry Book of the Year for Small World
2017 Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year (shortlist) for Moon for Sale
Works
Poetry
Tube Shelter Perspective (Southfields, 1993)
Sense and a Minor Fever (Vennel, 1993)
Marks & Sparks (Akros, 1995)
Hand Held (Akros, 1997)
Perfume & Petrol Fumes (Diehard, 1999)
Frosted, Melted (Diehard, 2002)
Lucky Day (Carcanet, 2005, ISBN 978-1-85754-761-0)
Greenfields (Carcanet, 2007, ISBN 978-1-85754-920-1)
Rays (Carcanet, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84777-010-3)
Small World (Carcanet, 2012, ISBN 978-1847771582)
Moon for Sale (Carcanet, 2017)
The Owner of the Sea: Three Inuit Stories Retold (Carcanet, 2021)
Late Gifts (Carcanet, 2023)
Film
*Richard Price, directed by Viera Čákanyová, (Česká televize, 2015)
Artist's Books
Gift Horse, images and design by Ronald King, poem by Richard Price, Circle Press, 1999
A Twenty-Piece Puzzle, edition of three, visual art and design by Chan Ky-Yut, poems by Richard Price, Lyric Press, 2004.
The Mechanical Word, five mechanical books by Karen Bleitz with poems by Richard Price, Circle Press, 2005.
little but often, design by Ronald King, with poems by Richard Price, Circle Press, 2007
folded, design by Julie Johnstone, text by Richard Price, essence press, 2008
Wake Up and Sleep, images and design by Caroline Isgar, poems by Richard Price, 2009
Going, going, gone, images and design by Ronald King, poems by Richard Price, Circle Press, 2013
Sedna and the Fulmar, images and design by Ronald King, poems by Richard Price, 2017
Digital, design by Julie Johnstone, text by Richard Price, essence press, 2018
Tinderness, design and photographs by Simon Lewandowski, poems by Richard Price, Wild Pansy Press, 2022
Short stories
A boy in summer: short stories, 11/9, 2002, ISBN 978-1-903238-50-9
Novels
The Island, Two Ravens Press, ISBN 978-1-906120-54-2
Non-fiction
The Fabulous Matter of Fact: The Poetics of Neil M. Gunn Edinburgh University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-7486-0259-9
David Miller, Richard Price (eds), British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography (Oak Knoll Press/The British Library, 2006). ISBN 978-1-58456-197-2
David Kinloch, Richard Price (eds), La Nouvelle Alliance: influences francophone sur la littérature écossaise moderne (Ellug, 2000)
James McGonigal, Richard Price (eds) The Star You Steer By: Basil Bunting and British Modernism (Rodopi, 2000)
Richard Price, Is This A Poem? [Essays on Modern Poetry, Poetry Magazines, and Artist's Books] (Molecular, 2016).
Reviews
Robert Potts (18 June 2005). "Margin of horror (Review of Lucky Day)". The Guardian.
David Wheatley (31 October 2009). "Rays by Richard Price and The Hundred Thousand Places by Thomas A Clark". The Guardian.
Caroline Clark (23 Jan 2013). "Clark on Price (Review of Small World)". Eyewear.