The Invisible College

I have just come back from a thing. I am tired. A good afternoon of good conversation about large, important … More

Lifesaving Poems: Craig Raine’s ‘Heaven on Earth’

Heaven on Earth Now that it is night, you fetch the wash from outer space, from the frozen … More

Here are the most read Lifesaving Poems of 2014. For the first time I have been able to compare last … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems posts in May, 2011. Below is a list of the twenty most popular poems … More

At the start of each academic year, usually when I have known them for a week or so, I make … More

One of the most powerful performances on my old Faber cassette tape of Ted Hughes reading his poems is ‘Bride … More

I have been thinking a lot recently about the gap between what is expected of us and what we think … More

Morning on Earth Morning on earth, light snow, and just when it was so warm, practically spring. But the thermometer … More

One CigaretteNo smoke without you, my fire.After you left,your cigarette glowed on in my ashtrayand sent up a long thread … More

Wind This house has been far out at sea all night,The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,Winds stampeding the … More

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

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

Some of my favourite poetry books of all time are anthologies. Not the headline selections everybody has (and has to … More

I want to live – Sharon Olds The most intense reading group I ever belonged to wasn’t really a reading … More

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

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

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

On the Impossibility of Staying Alive They have found a new moon; it stands on my shoulder. They call it … More