Murdering my darling

I have murdered my darling. Like a bird of a certain blue vintage, it is ex, dead, kaput, finished. The … More

Another look at Lux’s ‘An Horatian Notion’

One of my personal, private highlights of last year’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival was a Sunday morning breakfast hosted by The … More

After Paris

I found two blog posts especially moving in the aftermath of last week’s attacks in Paris, both by the same … More

Making Poetry Happen

  Announcing the publication of Making Poetry Happen: Transforming the Poetry Classroom (Bloomsbury, 2015). Making Poetry Happen provides a valuable resource … More

Influences: my first reader

  My first reader was a man called Fergus. A friend of a flatmate at university, I never got to … More

Cut through

Cut through to what happens when you listen. Cut through to making it happen, listening for it, failing, then doing … More

New Year letter

Dear Ant Looking forward to 2015 it’s tempting to think it will never reach the heights of 2014. Big mistake. Huge. … More

Writing Research Across Borders (a new poem)

I am delighted to have a new poem Writing Research Across Borders (2014): Poster Sessions in Hinterland With thanks to Judi Sutherland … 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

The man kept piling things on

  I am driving to a thing. Not a famous thing, an out of the way thing. A classroom, perhaps. … More

Thingless

I am not at a thing. The things have dried up (or I have stopped going). I am thingless. I … More

How to be a writing tutor

Thanks to the vision and generosity of Jean Sprackland, between 1999-2001 I had the privilege of working with the great … More

The poem always wins

You think it will be about your childhood. It turns out to be about an onion. Or a night in … More

It has gone

For now, at least, it has gone. The notebooks with promising phrases, the backs of envelopes with doodles: they are … More

Influences: Duncan Kramer

I met the furniture designer Duncan Kramer at summer camp. Not as kids but as what we laughingly called leaders. … More

Hated by the book

The book is not in love with me. I shower it with love and promises of more stationery, but all … More

Such fun

We are driving to a thing.  We are lost. It is a lunch thing, so the children are in tow. … More

Now the silences are right

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