Lifesaving Poems: Carl Sandburg’s ‘Buffalo Dusk’

Apart from e e cummings and the genius Anon, one of my chief discoveries in the Voices and Junior Voices series that I … More

Lifesaving Poems: e e cummings’s ‘in Just’

I I first came across e e cummings’s ‘in Just’ in an anthology, Wordscapes, edited by Barry Maybury (OUP, 1971). … More

I first encountered Siân Hughes‘s poems sitting around a table with some talented teenage poets at the Arvon Foundation‘s writing … More

As I say in my previous blog post, I owe my knowledge of ‘8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970’ to the … More

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

The funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose … More

Here is a revelation: I did not always adore the work of Frank O’Hara. I had pause to consider why … More

Like a lot of people I first came across Carol Ann Duffy‘s ‘Words, Wide Night’ as a Poems on the … More

I have published a new poem in the style of Kenneth Koch, On Twitter, at Ink Sweat & Tears. Whether … More

August Kleinzahler, 2004 International Griffin Poetry Prize Winner, Opens the 2005 Awards Ceremony My reader is immune to fashion or … More

Photo Credit: Tatiana Wilson You make the thing because you love the thing and you love the thing because someone … More

Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’. … More

I have said before that one of the most useful things I have done in my life was to be … More

Last week I read Antony Dunn‘s marvellous essay about his poetics, ‘To Tell You the Truth’ (from In Their Own … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I … More

I came across ‘Elegy for Jane’ having found poems by Theodore Roethke in Ted Hughes’ classic anthology of poems and … More

As I say in my full length review of Jo Shapcott’s Of Mutability, really good books about cancer are rare. Really … More

I first came across ‘Sunday Lunchtime’ in a copy of Sunk Island Review, edited by Michael Blackburn. You can find … More