Advent poem 1: Joseph

Joseph They say there are signs. Not with her. I’m no professor but neither am I stupid. …

Life Begins With Cancer

This is the recording of my reading ‘Life Begins With Cancer’, recorded at the Greenbelt Festival on Sunday 25th August,…

If you’re not enough without the gold medal, you’ll never be enough with it. – John Candy, Cool Runnings I did not…

I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you. –Raymond Carver (‘For Tess’) A kind, wise man once…

Morning on Earth Morning on earth, light snow, and just when it was so warm, practically spring. But the thermometer…

Things I Learned at University How to bike on cobblestones and where to signal right. How to walk through doors…

Hysteria As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her…

Phil Bowen gave me this poem, written by a ten-year-old girl, in 1998 to illustrate a writing game he submitted…

A year ago I published Riddance, a book of poems, with Worple Press. It concerns my diagnosis and experience of cancer…

Today is the seventh anniversary of the day I was told I was officially in remission from cancer. The popular…

Thank you to Julia McGuinness for posting this interview with me on her Creative Connections blog. In it I discuss…

In the spring of 1998 I wrote to Seamus Heaney. I asked him to consider writing a Foreword to the…

A comment Mark Robinson made in the days following Seamus Heaney’s death in August resonated with me. He said he…

The Only Son at the Fish ‘n’ Chip Shop He lived with his mother till he was forty-five…

How It All Started Do you know this dream? An exam room full of neat, serious girls, your lucky gonk…

Rondeau Redouble There is so little left. The room is bare. She’ll strip his sheets and blankets by and…

Psalm How leaky are the borders of man-made states! How many clouds float over them scot-free, how much…

A year ago I went to hear Clare Best read from her extraordinary book Excisions (Waterloo Press, 2011). Clare…