Nathaniel Lloyd Richards

Words

I use words as my weapon of choice,
Words that come in the form of verse or prose sent to me from those that came before,
I pluck them out of the universe and arrange them carefully onto a page,

Call me Poet,

The colour of my skin I use as a superpower,
The Gods made me black so the light within can’t seep through my pores and dissipate into this unforgiving universe,

Call me Black,

Soca, reggae and Dancehall the soundtrack to my childhood,
Stew peas, and rice and peas aromas, cook down chicken and fried dumplings piled as high as the eye can see, a culture that played a huge part of making me uniquely me,

Call me Caribbean,

My name was given to me from my Granma after my mother was told she would bear no more children,
It’s meaning “a gift from God” I hold dear in my darkest hours,
It also belonged to my father so now that he’s gone it makes me feel closer to him in ways I couldn’t have had imagined,

Call me Nathaniel.

Nathaniel Lloyd Richards is a British Born black Caribbean man who lived in China for four and a half years (Beijing and Shanghai). He is an educator, with a history of Youth Work and has worked with children’s non-profit charities in the UK, New York and Utah.  In 2020 he completed his postgraduate work in Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health.