The Good, in memory of Anna Craft

My friend and colleague Anna Craft has died. She was famous -if that is the right word- as a researcher…

Coming home to Aldeburgh

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Robert Frost…

One of the poets I am most looking forward to listening to at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in November is…

Never having succeeded at school, I’ve always thought of poetry as the holidays, not term time. Hugo Williams In November…

It all started with two remarks, one by a friend, the other by a stranger at work. ß The friend’s…

Someone who knows me very well knocked me sideways with a comment the other day. Remarking on this blog,…

It Is Summer for Months Clothes are skimpy and tans are gotwithout flight bags.We saunter beside a canalwhere horses pull…

The Art of Disappearing When they say Don’t I know you?say no. When they invite you to the partyremember what…

I am driving to a thing. Not a famous thing, an out of the way thing. A classroom, perhaps.…

I am not at a thing. The things have dried up (or I have stopped going). I am thingless. I…

Thanks to the vision and generosity of Jean Sprackland, between 1999-2001 I had the privilege of working with the great…

Sometime in the early Nineties I did a very brave thing. I took myself to a poetry reading. I went…

The review isn’t exactly vicious as such, merely purely personal and savage. It stops short of questioning your parentage, but…

The Class to the Class of 2014 after Raymond Carver The class with beautiful scarves The class who learned…

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems posts in May, 2011. Below is a list of the twenty most popular poems…

You think it will be about your childhood. It turns out to be about an onion. Or a night in…

For now, at least, it has gone. The notebooks with promising phrases, the backs of envelopes with doodles: they are…

I have finished the thing. People come up to me to say things. It seems to have gone well. While…