The fame question

When I visit schools to read and talk about poetry there is often some sort of Q and A following … More

New Year Letter

Dear Anthony (I will never get used to calling you Tony) Here are some words of advice from your nearing-fifty-year-old … More

An old friend of mine wrote to me the other day, out of the blue, to tell me about … More

Two readings stood out for me in 2013. The first was at an arts centre in the middle of nowhere … More

This is the recording of my reading ‘Life Begins With Cancer’, recorded at the Greenbelt Festival on Sunday 25th August, … More

If you’re not enough without the gold medal, you’ll never be enough with it. – John Candy, Cool Runnings I did not … More

Things I Learned at University How to bike on cobblestones and where to signal right. How to walk through doors … More

Phil Bowen gave me this poem, written by a ten-year-old girl, in 1998 to illustrate a writing game he submitted … More

A year ago I published Riddance, a book of poems, with Worple Press. It concerns my diagnosis and experience of cancer … More

Today is the seventh anniversary of the day I was told I was officially in remission from cancer. The popular … More

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

In the spring of 1998 I wrote to Seamus Heaney. I asked him to consider writing a Foreword to the … More

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

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