Heaney’s Pedagogy

A comment Mark Robinson made in the days following Seamus Heaney’s death in August resonated with me. He said he … 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

Timetable We all remember school, of course: the lino warming, shoe bag smell, expanse of polished floor. It’s where we … More

I met Evangeline Paterson once, in the early Nineties, at a workshop in London. Rupert Loydell suggested I went as … More

Laura Apol’s ‘The Switch’ is a witty poem which explores the tension between primal, and sometimes unforeseen, forces and the … More

Emily Riall will be a new name to many readers of this blog. She was a fine young poet … More

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

In 1991 I made the decision to teach part-time so that I could put poetry more at the centre of … More

A Poem for Someone Who is Juggling Her Life This is a poem for someonewho is juggling her life.Be still … More

I once heard Stephen Knight say ‘If I am reading well then I am writing well.’ It was a Q … 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

W.H. Auden once said that writers should always be honest, even about their prejudices. So here is my confession: when … More

The Journey One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice–though … More

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

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

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