Lifesaving Poems: Sean O’Brien’s ‘Before’

To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas … More

From the archives: ‘Results’, by Siân Hughes

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

During the Christmas period I am reposting some old posts from my archive. Wishing all my readers a very happy … More

Now that we have finally had one in the UK, I found myself wondering recently how many of my Lifesaving Poems choices … More

I have not read a book in six months -Raymond Carver, ‘Drinking While Driving’ I can still remember the shock … More

I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you. –Raymond Carver (‘For Tess’) A kind, wise man once … More

In the spring of 1998 I wrote to Seamus Heaney. I asked him to consider writing a Foreword to the … More

Swineherd When all this is over, said the swineherd, I mean to retire, where Nobody will have heard about … More

Just about everyone I know who reads and writes poetry seriously owes a debt of one kind or another to … More