Ronald Carson

“Don’t be surprised if I demur, for, be advised
My passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.”

From Heaney's "An Open Letter" 1982

1st - Francis Browne Poetry Competition 2025

Allow me a small celebratory flourish. Absolutely delighted.

#IrishPoetry #PoetryCompetition #IrishLiterature #PoetsOfBluesky #FrancisBrowne

The black dog at the gate, the mind not knowing itself, waiting for morning.

This is the real shape of 3 a.m. anxiety.

You're naming it without romanticizing it.

Gah! Didn't have a chance to watch yet, but love to see Irish teams get stuck in. Catch up with ye on the boomtube tomorra.

"Kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son."

Ceasefire as the hardest human act:
recognizing your enemy across the body.

This lands.

"My veins don't end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life"

Dalton saying: everyone is my people because my blood
doesn't recognize borders.

Reading this after winning a poetry competition feels
like a reminder of what the work is actually for.

"They weren't my people, though,
so I carried on and didn't stop."

As someone who left Belfast and wrote poems about what I carried
(a tooth, turf, an unposted letter), this poem asks the question
I've been avoiding:

What did I leave behind? And for whom?

Powerful work.

Brilliant. Strength to you, Melissa.

Seamus Heaney showed Northern Irish poets we could write the ground
under our feet without apology or translation.

His collected poems: a masterclass in making the local universal, the small utterly precise. Still learning from him. Always will be.

#SeamusHeaney #IrishPoetry #NorthernIrishWriters

🏆 First Place - Francis Browne Poetry Competition 2025

"Departure Ballad" won. The poem about the night ferry from Belfast,
and thirty years of trying to translate
"if only" into another life.

My ode to everyone who ever left.

#IrishPoetry #PoetryCompetition #IrishLiterature #PoetsOfBluesky

Finalist — “Departure Ballad,” 2025 Frances Browne Poetry Competition! Grateful to the readers and festival team. Onward to Oct 10.
#Poetry #Shortlist #FrancesBrowne #Ireland

Honored that Departure Ballad made the Frances Browne shortlist. Grateful to the readers & festival team—see you in October. #Poetry #Shortlist #FrancesBrowne #IrishPoetry #PoetryCommunity

Portrush, August Aye, Portrush on the tail-end of August, everything sticky, everything loud, everything costing a shilling more than you own.

This is not just a memory of a day at the beach; it's a portrait of a childhood caught between the confines of a fractured city and the boundless possibility of the sea.

open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

Moonrise over Goldstone (After Goldstone Deep Space Station)

As a child, I was the Belfast boy who taped a photo of Voyager 1 above his bunkbed. As a man, I became an engineer. Somewhere in between, I became a poet—haunted distance, signal, and survival.

substack.com/@ronaldcarso...

Honored that “Departure Ballad” made the Frances Browne longlist. From San Diego to Donegal—grateful for the bridges poems build.

#Poetry #Longlist #FrancesBrowne #IrishPoetry #PoetryCommunity

Biscuit Tin Confessional There’s a whole weather inside that first grey morning—low sky pressing the kettle into service while the rest of the state is still pretending it’s July.

substack.com/@ronaldcarso...

When the World Tilted North-East The Saturday we were ten, the world tilted north-east and spilled us out on the coast road to Ardglass, the Vauxhall’s back seat a small republic of knees and comic books.

substack.com/@ronaldcarso...

My meditation on childhood, memory, and the fleeting, precious nature of perfect moments.

I’ve just shared an audio reflection. I’d be honored if voices like @poetryireland.bsky.social, @bansheepress.bsky.social, @jesstraynor.bsky.social, @eatthestorms.com, @eoghanwalls.bsky.social & @sonyagildea.bsky.social could listen and leave a thought. Poetry, after all, is communal soil.

Heaney’s shadow is long. But shadows mean light exists.

I’ve just released a spoken-word reflection on Digging—not mimicry, but reverence. A moment from a Belfast classroom, exhaled decades later.

🎧 Listen here → open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

#Poetry #IrishVoices #SubstackAudio

She Moved Through the Fair

Not a reading. A return.

The first audio release from The Last Vowel—
a collection of Irish songs rewritten in the hush between generations.

🎧 Listen here:
open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

#AudioPoetry #IrishPoetry #SubstackReads

3 Books. 1 Signal.
Childhood wonder → orbital grief → the ache of return.
A former aerospace engineer turns the Voyager mission into a poetic memoir trilogy.

Voyager's 50th anniversary in 2027. "The Unified Trilogy" is coming soon.

#memoir #poetry #Voyager #STEM #literaryagent #nonfiction

Ronald Carson
Poet. Engineer.

@rcfieldnotes is where I trace what haunts and what echoes.

Debut collection The Last Vowel is now complete.
📖 [Publisher pitch in progress]

open.substack.com/pub/ronaldca...

#IrishPoetry #DebutPoet