8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970poemTom Raworth (from Jumpstart, ed. Cliff Yates, Poetry Society, 1999) As I say in my previous blog post,…
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Foal Failure
I first came across ‘Birth of the Foal’ at the recommendation of the great Cliff Yates. He told me he’d been…
Lifesaving Poems:Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Poem’
The funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose…
Lifesaving Poems: Frank O’Hara’s ‘Why I am Not a Painter’
Here is a revelation: I did not always adore the work of Frank O’Hara. I had pause to consider why…
Lifesaving Poems: Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Words, Wide Night’
Like a lot of people I first came across Carol Ann Duffy‘s ‘Words, Wide Night’ as a Poems on the…
Lifesaving Poems: Thomas Lux’s ‘An Horatian Notion’
You make the thing because you love the thing and you love the thing because someone else loved it enough…
Lifesaving Poems: Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’
Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’. …
Lifesaving Poems: Hilary Menos’s ‘Slaughterhouse’
Slaughterhouse Let it be done here, here where deathis all in a day’s work, and by men who dealin the…
Lifesaving Poems: Deryn Rees-Jones’s ‘What It’s Like To Be Alive’
What It’s Like To Be Aliveafter Django BatesI remember the nights, and the sounds of the nights,and the moon and…
The Top 20 Lifesaving Poems
I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I…
Lifesaving Poems: Theodore Roethke’s ‘Elegy for Jane’
Elegy for Jane(My student, thrown by a horse)I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;And her quick look, a…
Diagnosis anniversary 7
Today is the seventh anniversary of my diagnosis with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL), an aggressive cancer of the lymphatic system. I…
Lifesaving Poems: Jo Shapcott’s ‘Era’
EraThe twenty-second day of March two thousand and threeI left home shortly after eight thirtyon foot towards the City. I…
Lifesaving Poems: Connie Bensley’s ‘Sunday Lunchtime’
Sunday LunchtimeThe whirlpools of the launderettedo not recognise the Sabbath,so the air in Worple Streetsmells of soapsuds and roast beef.The…
When I knew I had cancer
Seven years ago today, the date in the photograph above was the day I knew had cancer. By this…
Lifesaving Poems: Galway Kinnell’s ‘Saint Francis and the Sow’
Saint Francis and the SowThe budstands for all things,even for those things that don’t flower,for everything flowers, from within, of…
The Top 10 Lifesaving Poems
I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems…
The Next Big Thing: some questions about Love for Now
The Next Big Thing I have been been tagged by poet and blogger Abegail Morley to answer set questions relating to my memoir…
Lifesaving Poems 