On not relapsing

A year ago I had a relapse of my cancer. Except I didn’t. For a week or so I knew … More

Adélia Prado’s tone

She started as a name. There I was, following my nose, minding my own business, trying to ignore all instincts … More

The other day I was asked what I look for in poetry. Needing to give a quick answer I said: I … More

Alan Booth wasn’t the first teacher to teach me something, but he was the first who drew me into the … More

This is Jörn Cann. He was my ward doctor at the haematology unit where I was treated for non-Hodgkin’s … More

The online poetry magazine dedicated to very short poems, Nutshells and Nuggets, has taken two new poems of mine. You … More

It Is Summer for Months Clothes are skimpy and tans are gotwithout flight bags.We saunter beside a canalwhere horses pull … More

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

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

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

The review isn’t exactly vicious as such, merely purely personal and savage. It stops short of questioning your parentage, but … More

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

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

I have finished the thing. People come up to me to say things. It seems to have gone well. While … More

I am at a thing. It is my thing, contributing to the thing of others, who I do not know. … More

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

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

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