August, by Tove Jansson

As the summer holidays take over I am re-posting the odd blog post from my archive. To celebrate the start … More

Writing in the gaps

There isn’t much left to be done. The proof reading, the book blurbs (they take longer than the poems), the … More

After what feels like a very long wait since the publication of Riddance in 2012, I am delighted to be publishing … More

Some of you will have seen this blog post before. It is a taster of some of the contents … More

I think I am done. I think. I think, therefore I am done? I think I am. No doubt there … More

When Riddance came out in 2012 people said some very nice and kind things about it. But that is not … More

I have been doing the proofs to my new books. And I am scared. Scared that I have got it … More

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the ‘poets I go back to’ idea, that I first came across in … More

Dear James (may I call you James?) Though it’s been a while (at least ten years, maybe more) it feels as … More

I am delighted to announce some readings to promote my forthcoming books The Afterlife and Deck Shoes with Worple Press and … More

‘You knew how to live in those days’ Peter Sansom Sometime in the early Nineties my friend … More

I have been reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life recently. In it she asks … More

I have carried it with me each day, that sense of shame about the fact that I write, that it … More

About a month before my friend Pammy died, she said something that may have permanently changed me. We had … More

A few words about the piece below. I wrote the first draft of it in 1989, a year after the … More

I have been thinking a lot about habits recently. The unconscious, unthinking ones which, as Sylvia Plath said about words, … More

For the final Saturday in Lent, and the final post of this LentBlog series, I have great pleasure in reposting … More

I wrote the poem below in the summer of 2015. David Cameron had won a slim majority in the … More

Dear Alicia I can’t believe it is three years since I got to hang out with you at Totleigh … More

after Shawna Lemay Write a poem about the rain. Or the wind. Write about what you learned at university. … More