An event of this magnitude Overshadows the destruction of the Berlin Wall And the troubles in the Caucasus. –Robert Rehder,…
Why poetry matters
The value of poetry is that it should matter … first to the writer and then to the reader. Michael…
About Maurice
I first met Maurice in the sitting room of a mutual friend, a lifelong Labour supporter, the night after the…
KBO
‘80% of success is showing up.’ -Woody Allen I was chatting with a student the other day when I said…
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…
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…
Why social media doesn’t create intelligence
Those kind and wonderful people at Change This have just released a new batch of free, downloadable manifestos. These articles…
Goodbye Facebook, it’s been real (?)
Now for the other life. The one without mistakes. –Lou Lipsitz A year ago I found myself not looking at…
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…
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 –…
The Creativity Challenge
Below is the text of a PowerPoint presentation that I am giving today at the Directors of Studies Conference 2015, at Port…
Am I a poet?
A friend recently asked me if I was writing. I replied, as I always do, saying that it was going…
Lifesaving Poems: Fleur Adcock’s ‘The Soho Hospital for Women (IV)’
The Soho Hospital for Woman (IV) I am out in the supermarket choosing – this very afternoon, this day…
A day he won’t have
I had bumped into a friend at the cash machine. We greeted each other, as we always do, with a…
Pure distraction
In the rift between what is going to happen and whatever we would wish to happen, poetry holds attention for…
Ignore everyone, absorb everything
During the mad phase, when everything was a tweet or a share or a retweet, one of my favourite discoveries…
Nothing doing
Sporting occasions are bad. Or the Corbyn result, that was hard. I seem to remember (no one else does) a…
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…
Lifesaving Poems 