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

The most read Lifesaving Poems of 2013

These are the most read Lifesaving Poems posts of 2013. Mary Oliver, ‘The Journey’ I first read this on … More

Morning on Earth Morning on earth, light snow, and just when it was so warm, practically spring. But the thermometer … More

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

Hysteria As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her … More

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

The Only Son at the Fish ‘n’ Chip Shop He lived with his mother till he was forty-five … More

How It All Started Do you know this dream? An exam room full of neat, serious girls, your lucky gonk … More

Rondeau Redouble There is so little left. The room is bare. She’ll strip his sheets and blankets by and … More

Psalm How leaky are the borders of man-made states! How many clouds float over them scot-free, how much … 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, expanseof polished floor. It’s where we learnedto wait: … 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

Duty PsychiatristHe nods, and looks serious.Would you like to tell mea bit more about that?And she sighs, blurred and … More

TamoxifenMy doctor’s given me a massive canof elephant repellent. I’m to sprayit, after washing, on my skin. It willsubstantially reduce … More

Swineherd When all this is over, said the swineherd, I mean to retire, where Nobody will have heard about … More

I heard Michael Symmons Roberts give a magisterial reading from his book Drysalter recently. It was exemplary on so many levels, not … More