The First 50 Lifesaving Poems

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems posts in June 2011, back when I was using Posterous for this blog. … More

Lifesaving Poems: Derek Mahon’s ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’

Everything is Going to be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplatethe clouds clearing beyond the dormer … More

The first thing I do when a new copy of The North, Rialto or Smiths Knoll lands on the doormat … More

I met Peter Carpenter in the summer of 2001 at the Arvon Foundation’s Totleigh Barton writing centre. I was at … More

Riddance is published today. It is my fourth full-length collection of poems and my third with Worple Press. You can … More

I Am a Finn I am standing in the post office, about to mail a package back to Minnesota, to … More

Night Drive The smells of ordinarinessWere new on the night drive through France;Rain and hay and woods on the airMade … More

I have just come back from the Greenbelt Festival where I was delighted to give a talk about writing poetry … More

In 1991 I made the decision to spend more of my time concentrating on the thing that fulfilled me the … More

On the Impossibility of Staying Alive They have found a new moon; it stands on my shoulder. They call it … More

AutobiographyThe sniff of the real, that’swhat I’d want to get how it feltto sit on ParliamentHill on a May eveningstudying … More

Now that we in Britain have started to think of ourselves as the greatest cycling nation since dinosaurs roamed the … More

On Valentine’s Day, 2006, I was was formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. Riddance is … More

‘More Chelsea Than Sunderland’ was prompted by the remark of a doctor of a friend of mine, when asked to … More

I first heard Chris Southgate’s ‘High Fidelity’ sometime in 2005, when I was lucky enough to be part of a … More

I absolutely love this poem by Andy Brown. I am not sure when I read or heard it first. Possibly … More

I can remember exactly where I was when I first read these poems. It was on the balcony of the … More

I saw the sign above on a wall during a visit I recently made to a school to talk to … More