Influences: Martin Wilson

One of the biggest influences on my life, let alone my writing, is Martin Wilson. I should know; he’s my … More

It is summer for months

It Is Summer for Months Clothes are skimpy and tans are got without flight bags. We saunter beside a … More

I am completely torn apart -Rupert Loydell When I first read Raymond Carver’s Fires I loved and understood all of it, … More

Having not succeeded at school, I’ve always thought of poetry as the holidays, rather than term-time. Hugo Williams I went … More

Lately I have been pondering the practice of paying attention, vis-à-vis my habit of keeping a notebook to capture impressions, … More

When I visit schools to read and talk about poetry there is often some sort of Q and A following … More

Teachers’ views of creativity is my new research article exploring poetry writing pedagogy. Here is the Abstract: Discourses of creativity in … More

I became interested in Robert Lowell’s poetry because of the criticism of Seamus Heaney. I had tried reading him before, … More

Who? Who is that child I see wandering, wandering down by the side of the quivering stream? Why does … More

I think my first bout of Poetry Exhaustion occurred sometime after my A levels. Our English paper was quite advanced for its … More

One year I decided that I would decorate one of my teaching rooms with my collection of Poems on the … More

The Bath Festivals‘ Write Team was a creative writing project designed to develop pupil confidence and engagement in their learning. The … More

In 2007 Sue Dymoke, Andrew Lambirth and I got together and decided we were going to apply to the ESRC … More

Sometimes you do not get a poem, or what a poet is up to, straight away. In the case of … More

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

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