On the missing short story

It was going to be great. I wrote it more than seven years ago, in two bursts after work with … More

Lifesaving Lines: Why We Must Write, by Mark Halliday

I thought of it before I knew I had remembered it. Just the word ‘then’. Rereading and searching at speed … More

Remember when you got the news of the accident- or the illness- in the life of someone more laced into … More

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotyzing yourself and going over the … More

after and with apologies to Mark Halliday The missing blog post has gone AWOL. Never sure of its place in … More

The poem that came into my mind on waking up this morning and hearing the General Election result is Mark … More

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

A very special thing happened this week: a large delivery of poetry pamphlets fromHappenstance Press arrived. It included the wonderful No … More

I was struck by a remark of Seamus Heaney in an interview he gave some years ago now. He was … More

Over the last few days I have been thinking about the so-called New York school of poets, in posts about … More