Influence

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ the book says. ‘Why are you wearing my slippers?’ I say.…

Intimacy

‘You don’t sound very ambitious,’ the book says. ‘And good morning to you, too!’ I say. ‘I mean,’ the book…

‘What do you want?’ says the book. ‘Who’s asking?’ I say. ‘Me,’ says the book. ‘I am asking.’ ‘What do…

I am lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, detoxing from the day, as I do. ‘You all right?’…

I have been writing recently about going deeper, not wider. Listening to music I already possess, reading the books already…

As I was saying the book that I bought and then did not read and which caught my eye recently is Now…

The book is looking at me from across the room. It is dressed smartly, but not to impress. It looks…

So in an effort to live deeply and not widely, amongst other things I have been looking at the shelves…

In The Year of Living Deeply I am trying to attend to the things which feed me very much (family;…

Remember when you got the news of the accident- or the illness- in the life of someone more laced into…

Below Zero We are at a party that doesn’t love us. At last the party lets its mask drop and…

We are in Richard and Andi’s kitchen in their minuscule flat on the Wandsworth Road in the early nineties. Richard…

S …

It’s a funny feeling, almost new each time I experience it, an anticipation of loss that is somehow fresh and…

The Curtain Falls Suddenly a life is over – Ends with such serious charades The Dean makes lame quips…

As promised last week, here is my presentation of the paper I co-wrote with Sue Dymoke in which we argue on…

Listening to the wonderful array of speakers at the Foyle Young Poets symposium on Monday, I tried to think back…

‘Even the poetic world is social’ (Bakhtin, 1981, 300). This time next week, Saturday 23 June, I will be presenting…