The Year of Living Deeply 8: Doing One Thing

I am really bad at doing one thing. If I am chopping an onion, I am listening to the radio. … More

A new poem in support of Mental Health Awareness Week 2015

I am delighted to have a new poem, To Spring, published today at Sarah James’s blog, in With You In … More

I Am Not I I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not … More

I get to the reading on time. I find a place near the front, so I can get to the … More

I have been thinking a lot recently about Tomas Tranströmer’s poem ‘Alone’. When I first read it I was taken … More

I heard ‘Atlas’ before I read it. I was in a tiny, tardis-like medieval church, at a rather posh wedding … More

When I began to recover from my treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006 this lovely article about Nick Drake’s Northern … More

This is Jörn Cann. He was my ward doctor at the haematology unit where I was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma … More

Love for Now did not begin with an idea but an illness. As I have written elsewhere, there wasn’t a plan. I … More

I have been thinking a lot recently about the career trajectory of poets, including my own, whose work briefly becomes visible … More

I wrote recently about poets who disappear from view, specifically Susannah Amoore, from Faber’s Poetry Introduction 6. My point is far … More

Nine days after I was told that my chemotherapy treatment was not working in April 2006 the doctors discovered the … 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 have written before that there are a wide range of reasons for including the poems I have in my … More

The chances are, more of us are mortal than have multiple orgasms -Violet Weingarten, Intimations of Mortality When I was diagnosed … More

I have just been asked by Abegail Morley to send her a list of my poetry books of 2012 for … More

I fell in love with the poetry of Mark Strand via the enthusiasm of Rupert Loydell sometime in the late … More

If you have a friend who is diagnosed with cancer, the best thing to do in terms of what to … More

I was sad to read yesterday via Twitter that the leading Dutch poet Rutger Kopland has died, aged 77. He … More

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