Lifesaving Poems: Philip Levine’s ‘Magpiety’

In September 2006 my treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma came to an end. I was not told I was officially in…

Lifesaving Poems: Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mushrooms’

I think my first bout of Poetry Exhaustion occurred sometime after my A levels. Our English paper was quite advanced for its…

To His Lost Lover Now they are no longerany trouble to each other he can turn things over, get down…

To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas in…

Atlas There is a kind of love called maintenanceWhich stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks…

When I began to recover from my treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006 this lovely article about Nick Drake’s Northern…

Let Evening Come Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as…

Some time ago I wrote about the importance to me of discovering, through my friend Duncan Kramer, the anthology The…

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of getting back in touch with Mark Robinson, poet, author and former editor…

I first had the pleasure of reading this remarkable and delightful poem by Janet Fisher in 2001 in the company of a…

Photo: Rob Starling ‘Fishermen’, by Alasdair Paterson, is one of my Lifesaving Poems. I first read it as a new teacher,…

Thanks to the recommendation of Naomi Jaffa (again) I had the smug pleasure of already knowing the work of Tony…

Colin Mallett, Sculptor The poets I go back to This article first appeared in the North magazine, in November 2007.…

I was lucky. I was taught English in one of those classrooms with complete sets of A Taste of Honey,…

It was summer. I found myself on the top floor of the library, on the recommendation of a friend:…

One year I decided that I would decorate one of my teaching rooms with my collection of Poems on the…

And sometimes you don’t know where it comes from. It appears as a heat, prickly, under your skin, your scalp.…

I first met Lawrence Sail at a private view at a gallery just outside Exeter. My family and I…