Lifesaving Poems: Alison Mosquera’s ‘Tamoxifen’

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

Lifesaving Poems: Adrienne Rich’s ‘In the Wake of Home’

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

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