I Am Not I

I Am Not I I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not…

Cancer patients’ reviews of Love for Now

My memoir of cancer, Love for Now, has been reviewed by cancer patients, and former patients, under the aegis of Macmillan…

I get to the reading on time. I find a place near the front, so I can get to the…

Sometimes I think it’s gone forever -Ken Smith I want to write a poem, Seamus Heaney says, but I have…

Seth Godin says in The Icarus Deception that however many good reviews you are lucky to get for your work, it…

I have been thinking a lot recently about the gap between what is expected of us and what we think…

Just as I do not go around thinking about my cancer all the time, there are times when I feel…

I have been thinking a lot recently about Tomas Tranströmer’s poem ‘Alone’. When I first read it I was taken…

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

Dear Anthony (I will never get used to calling you Tony) Here are some words of advice from your nearing-fifty-year-old…

I began the year with two books which helped me slow down and breathe: Christian McEwen’s World Enough and Time and…

These are the most read Lifesaving Poems posts of 2013. Mary Oliver, ‘The Journey’ I first read this on…

An old friend of mine wrote to me the other day, out of the blue, to tell me about…

Herod With Wikileaks in the headlines you could say the timing was perfect. Three Iraqi profs…

Two readings stood out for me in 2013. The first was at an arts centre in the middle of nowhere…

Teachers’ views of creativity is my new research article exploring poetry writing pedagogy. Here is the Abstract: Discourses of creativity in…

Mary At first a fluttering then a kick, his fist pummelling my ribcage when I knelt to pray. They…

The Holiday Inn Northerners. But honest. Him, hands like shovels, his eyes brimming and fish-flick. And her,…