An interview: Putting Words to Cancer

Thank you to Julia McGuinness for posting this interview with me on her Creative Connections blog. In it I discuss … More

Lifesaving Poems: Clare Best’s ‘The bookbinder’

A year ago I went to hear Clare Best read from her extraordinary book Excisions (Waterloo Press, 2011). Clare … More

Earlier this year I ran a Poetry School course about poetry and health called Written on the Body. It was … More

This is What I Wanted to Sign Off With You know what I’m like when I`m sick: I’d sooner curse … More

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

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

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

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

I came across Hubert Moore’s fantastic book of poems The Hearing Room (Shoetstring, 2006) via my friend and neighbour Lawrence Sail. In … More

On headphones in the day case ward and in my kitchen late at night, Mogwai’s New Paths to the Helicon, … More

Andrew Neilson has reviewed Riddance in Magma poetry magazine. He describes it as a ‘a moving, often harrowing, book, while also … More

Readers of this blog will know of my antipathy to the martial language often used in the culture to describe … More

I wrote here recently about losing my ambition as a writer. In case readers are in any doubt, the stuff … More

This is Jörn Cann. He was my ward doctor at the haematology unit where I was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma … More

Love for Now did not begin with an idea but an illness. As I have written elsewhere, there wasn’t a plan. I … More

Towards the end of my treatment for cancer in 2006 I had one of the most profound conversations of my … More

Tomorrow the Church Times publishes a combined review of my memoir of cancer Love for Now and Riddance, my … More

In February, 1999 I was sitting in a car park with Naomi Jaffa when she asked me what I … More