Lifesaving Poems: Michael Symmons Roberts’s ‘Ultramarine’

I came across Michael Symmons Roberts‘s ‘Ultramarine’ during a stint as poetry editor for Third Way magazine. Like nearly everything … More

On reading poetry to dying people

I want to live – Sharon Olds The most intense reading group I ever belonged to wasn’t really a reading … More

Seven years ago this is what happened halfway through my treatment for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I went for a midway scan … More

Sometimes you do not get a poem, or what a poet is up to, straight away. In the case of … More

One of the pleasures of being alive is reading John Ash. Think of a prize-winning poet, someone you think of … More

Apart from e e cummings and the genius Anon, one of my chief discoveries in the Voices and Junior Voices series that I … More

I I first came across e e cummings’s ‘in Just’ in an anthology, Wordscapes, edited by Barry Maybury (OUP, 1971). … More

I first encountered Siân Hughes‘s poems sitting around a table with some talented teenage poets at the Arvon Foundation‘s writing … More

As I say in my previous blog post, I owe my knowledge of ‘8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970’ to the … More

I first came across ‘Birth of the Foal’ at the recommendation of the great Cliff Yates. He told me he’d been … More

The funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose … More

Here is a revelation: I did not always adore the work of Frank O’Hara. I had pause to consider why … More

Like a lot of people I first came across Carol Ann Duffy‘s ‘Words, Wide Night’ as a Poems on the … More

Photo Credit: Tatiana Wilson You make the thing because you love the thing and you love the thing because someone … More

Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’. … More

I have said before that one of the most useful things I have done in my life was to be … More

Last week I read Antony Dunn‘s marvellous essay about his poetics, ‘To Tell You the Truth’ (from In Their Own … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I … More