To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas in … More
Category: Sian Hughes
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
A note from Seamus Heaney
During the Christmas period I am reposting some old posts from my archive. Wishing all my readers a very happy … More
Lifesaving poems of summer
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
I have not read a book in six months -Raymond Carver, ‘Drinking While Driving’ I can still remember the shock … More
Gratitude
I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you. –Raymond Carver (‘For Tess’) A kind, wise man once … More
‘I am fragments’: a note from Seamus Heaney
In the spring of 1998 I wrote to Seamus Heaney. I asked him to consider writing a Foreword to the … More
Lifesaving Poems: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s ‘Swineherd’
Swineherd When all this is over, said the swineherd, I mean to retire, where Nobody will have heard about … More
Lifesaving Poems: Ted Hughes’s ‘Wind’
Wind This house has been far out at sea all night,The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,Winds stampeding the … More