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 … More

T.S. Eliot’s ‘Hysteria’

I am taking a break from writing brand new blog posts over the summer. Instead of posting new work I … More

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

I am taking a break from writing brand new blog posts over the summer. Instead of posting new work I … More

I am taking a break from writing brand new blog posts over the summer. Instead of posting new work I … More

I am taking a break from writing brand new blog posts over the summer. Instead of posting new work I … More

I am taking a break from writing brand new blog posts over the summer. Instead of posting new work I … More

I am taking a break from writing brand new blog posts over the summer. Instead of posting new work I … More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven years ago I published The Year of Drinking Water, a pamphlet of poems, about my experience of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (Exeter … More