In this resonant collection of unbridled fancy, Peter Richardson’s characters hunger for soulful connections in the midst of bedlam and loss. Ranging from a literate vernacular to high diction and low humour, these poems confirm that Richardson is a craftsman of the finest kind, all confidence and mischief, “whistling from scuffmark to scuffmark” as he traipses across the page and into the psyche.
“Peter Richardson is pulling our legs in a rather spectacular fashion. One would have to search high and low, near and far, to find poetry as entertaining and flamboyant as that found in Bit Parts for Fools. These are poems that demand you read them two or three times, for the fun of it of course, but also for clarity. Richardson’s exuberance is our reward in these richly textured works. … Richardson is completely committed to the universe of each poem. … Bit Parts for Fools by Peter Richardson is an immensely rewarding read. Can’t recommend it highly enough.”
– michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca

“This is a chameleonic book, alive with ‘ancestral transmutations’. Richardson can write of ‘a gun-toting do-gooder on a buggy’ or evoke ‘bees nesting in crags above a shoreline of dirty syringes,’ and his words summon the mouth to savor them. Richardson’s wit, formal skill, and verbal ingenuity make this not only his finest achievement to date but one of the best collections of poetry to appear in recent years.”
“Bit Parts for Fools crackles with innovative language, in the deliciously quirky titles and the poems themselves: elaborate, complex, and often wonderfully ambivalent. What might happen if you invent a language and use one phrase (‘broischni hydranya’) as an incantation, or page through a very unusual ‘mourner’s abecedary’ that somehow combines ‘bestiary and breviary? This uniquely disarming voice uses chance and change to provide vivid takes on past and present lives and their unpredictable circumstances.”