What you read in 2019

Here are my most popular blog posts of 2019. As you will have seen, I am taking a brief sabbatical … More

Launching The Afterlife and Deck Shoes

Dear Friends I am thrilled and delighted to be launching my two new books, The Afterlife (Worple Press) and … More

As the holiday season continues I repost this list of various found poems that I have made over the … More

Dear James (may I call you James?) Though it’s been a while (at least ten years, maybe more) it feels as … More

I was saddened to hear of the death of the Australian poet Les Murray yesterday. In the autumn of 1997, … More

after Shawna Lemay Write a poem about the rain. Or the wind. Write about what you learned at university. … More

after Mark Halliday Because of the writing days. And because The discovery will not happen on its own, unprompted, … More

Going There is an evening coming in Across the fields, one never seen before, That lights no lamps. Silken … More

When I first read and began thinking about The Year of Living Deeply one of my instant reactions concerned the impact … More

Here are my most frequently-read blog posts of 2018, according to my WordPress stats. First, from the Lifesaving Poems … More

As I was saying the book that I bought and then did not read and which caught my eye recently is Now … More

So in an effort to live deeply and not widely, amongst other things I have been looking at the shelves … More

Below Zero We are at a party that doesn’t love us. At last the party lets its mask drop and … More

The Curtain Falls Suddenly a life is over – Ends with such serious charades The Dean makes lame quips … More

As promised last week, here is my presentation of the paper I co-wrote with Sue Dymoke in which we argue on … More

Listening to the wonderful array of speakers at the Foyle Young Poets symposium on Monday, I tried to think back … More

‘Even the poetic world is social’ (Bakhtin, 1981, 300). This time next week, Saturday 23 June, I will be presenting … More

Poem Without Sleep All the things that could happen to the baby came to me last night as I … More