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

How to disappear

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

Or this one. You arrive at the venue early but there is no one there to greet you. You pace … More

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

I was at a thing recently. Not my thing, a good thing. Luminosity filled the evening. In the pouring of … More

I am at a thing. It is not my thing, it is someone else’s thing. Poets are there. People I … More

[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man … More

I have said goodbye to the poem. For a while, a long while, we were not even speaking. After the … More

The poem is not happy. It glares up at me, its eyes spitting fury. ‘How dare you take me in … More

I am being pursued by the poem. It has been there for several years now, asking to be written. I … More

You stick to the routines you have set up, notebook observations, voracious reading, sending the work out to mags, even … More