Though you may disappear, you’re not forgotten here And I will say to you, I will do what I can…
Archive
Going for coffee
The book and I are passing each other messages through a third party. Neither of us bothers with the niceties…
Nine years ago today
Nine years ago today I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells. Even though I have…
Just another Wednesday
Days Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments…
Lifesaving Poems: Boris Pasternak’s ‘Hamlet’
Hamlet The buzz subsides. I have come on stage. Leaning in an open door I try to detect from…
Visiting hours
I am visiting the book. We have already been through a lot together, including the part where I killed it and…
Lifesaving Poems: Denise Levertov’s ‘The Secret’
The Secret Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don’t know the…
On writing and illness
Reading Arthur W. Frank’s astonishing At the Will of the Body recently has given me pause to reflect on the relationship…
Open letter to Arthur Frank (on reading At the Will of the Body)
Dear Arthur Frank I’m writing to say thank you for your extraordinary book At the Will of the Body. It is…
Murdering my darling
I have murdered my darling. Like a bird of a certain blue vintage, it is ex, dead, kaput, finished. The…
Another look at Lux’s ‘An Horatian Notion’
One of my personal, private highlights of last year’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival was a Sunday morning breakfast hosted by The…
After Paris
I found two blog posts especially moving in the aftermath of last week’s attacks in Paris, both by the same…
Lifesaving Poems: Ellen Doré Watson’s ‘Be Here First’
Be Here First I don’t know my trees but I know my trees. Their angling for what has spurned them; their spitting…
Finding Sharon Olds’s The Matter of This World
The Collection The Matter of This World: New and Selected Poems (Slow Dancer, 1987) I found The Matter of…
Making Poetry Happen
Announcing the publication of Making Poetry Happen: Transforming the Poetry Classroom (Bloomsbury, 2015). Making Poetry Happen provides a valuable resource…
Influences: my first reader
My first reader was a man called Fergus. A friend of a flatmate at university, I never got to…
Lifesaving Poems: Chrissy Williams’s ‘The Burning of the Houses’
The Burning Of The Houses Tottenham is on fire and I work in an arts centre where the sky is…
Cut through
Cut through to what happens when you listen. Cut through to making it happen, listening for it, failing, then doing…
Lifesaving Poems 