Art is an attitude

Here is a quotation from Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception that I have been meditating on for a while now. I have … More

Lost notebook

An event of this magnitude Overshadows the destruction of the Berlin Wall And the troubles in the Caucasus. –Robert Rehder, … More

Why poetry matters

The value of poetry is that it should matter … first to the writer and then to the reader.  Michael … More

KBO

‘80% of success is showing up.’ -Woody Allen I was chatting with a student the other day when I said … More

Waiting to be picked

If you’re not enough without the gold medal, you’ll never be enough with it. – John Candy, Cool Runnings I did not … More

What I learned this week

That CK Williams has died. More than two weeks ago! One of my heroes. This is the first thing I … More

Guest blog post: Poetry and Work, by Shawna Lemay

Poetry and Work   I recently took out a book via Interlibrary loan called, The Mind at Work: Valuing the … More

Guest blog post: Travelling without a visa, by Finuala Dowling

Travelling without a visa   It seems to me that all writing comes from a place of resistance inside – … More

Am I a poet?

A friend recently asked me if I was writing. I replied, as I always do, saying that it was going … More

Pure distraction

In the rift between what is going to happen and whatever we would wish to happen, poetry holds attention for … More

Ignore everyone, absorb everything

During the mad phase, when everything was a tweet or a share or a retweet, one of my favourite discoveries … More

Nothing doing

Sporting occasions are bad. Or the Corbyn result, that was hard. I seem to remember (no one else does) a … More

Guest blog post: Whose life is it anyway? by John Foggin

  A few weeks ago I was writing in my own blog, the great fogginzo’s cobweb, about the way I … More

Lifesaving Poems: Myra Schneider’s ‘Goulash’

Goulash A crucial ingredient is the right frame of mind so abandon all ideas of getting on. Stop pedalling, dismount, … More

This may not work

Since I decided to leave Twitter and abscond from Facebook I have been reminded of some of the guiding principles … More

Let’s love today

Let’s love today, the what we have now, this day, not        today or tomorrow or yesterday, but this passing moment, … More

Mostly when I’m tired

This is my hard time -Theodore Roethke   The mornings I can cope with. Just. Not grabbing my phone before … More

Noticing again

Day four of the Twitter-fast. By the time you read this, day seven. The first thing I notice is the … More