Kenneth Koch’s Melancholy

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

Lifesaving Poems: Sharon Olds’s ‘Looking at Them Asleep’

I found this poem in a collection of poems called The Matter of This World in a second hand … More

I was astonished to find in an old diary today that by 8 March 2006, less than one month after … More

To celebrate World Book Day last week I read the poem below, by Thomas Lux, to my students. It … More

This week saw the death of poet and Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szmborska. She was 88. Her compatriot Czeslaw Milosz described … More

With Only One Life Hold with both hands The tray of every day And pass in turn Along this … More

One of the things I love about my job is that I get to co-construct projects with other people. One of … More

By this time in January, 2006 I was fairly certain that something was very wrong with my health. Like a … More

Herod With Wikileaks in the headlines you could say the timing was perfect. Three Iraqi profs in … More

Below is a summary of some recent research on progress in pupils’ poetry writing and teachers’ metaphors of poetry writing … More

The Picnic It is the picnic with Ruth in the spring. Ruth was third on my list of seven girls … More

When I began teaching the Year 5 class of children whose work would form the basis of my doctoral … More

Ann Gray and I were chatting the other day. We were trying to decide how long we had known each … More

In 2002 I heard WN Herbert read ‘The Black Wet’ at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. This is not remarkable in itself, you might say, and … More

Photo: Derek Adams Some writers influence you through the pull of their imagination on your work, opening up new worlds … More

Ted Hughes died on 28 October, 1998, aged 68. He had been suffering with colon cancer. Just about everyone I … More

The Other Life in memory of Emily Riall I want to wake up in a house where the … More

photo: Gwenllian Riall Last week I posted a blog about entering remission after treatment for cancer. For me this moment … More