The fame question

When I visit schools to read and talk about poetry there is often some sort of Q and A following … More

Lifesaving Poems: Dave Smith’s ‘Reading the Books Our Children Have Written’

I once heard Stephen Knight say ‘If I am reading well then I am writing well.’ It was a Q … More

It is odd to speak of missing someone you never met, but this is how I feel about the American … More

Love for Now did not begin with an idea but an illness. As I have written elsewhere, there wasn’t a plan. I … More

The Bath Festivals‘ Write Team was a creative writing project designed to develop pupil confidence and engagement in their learning. The … More

I wrote recently about poets who disappear from view, specifically Susannah Amoore, from Faber’s Poetry Introduction 6. My point is far … More

Sometimes people, including poets, ask me how my writing is going. The difference between a poet and a non-poet asking … More

Nine days after I was told that my chemotherapy treatment was not working in April 2006 the doctors discovered the … More

8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970poemTom Raworth (from Jumpstart, ed. Cliff Yates, Poetry Society, 1999) As I say in my previous blog post, … More

Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’. … More

Elegy for Jane(My student, thrown by a horse)I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;And her quick look, a … More

The Next Big Thing I have been been tagged by poet and blogger Abegail Morley to answer set questions relating to my memoir … More

The chances are, more of us are mortal than have multiple orgasms -Violet Weingarten, Intimations of Mortality When I was diagnosed … More

If there is one difference I hope to make with Love for Now book it is to challenge the overwhelming … More

I was formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, on Valentine’s Day, 2006. I was 42. … More

There wasn’t a plan. On January 1, 2006 I woke up with a sharp pain on my right side. I … More

I began writing Love for Now, my journal-memoir of diagnosis and treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006, one week before I … More

ProsserIn winter two kinds of fields on the hillsoutside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slipsrising overnight out of … More