When I began to recover from my treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006 this lovely article about Nick Drake’s Northern…
Lifesaving Poems: Jane Kenyon’s ‘Let Evening Come’
Let Evening Come Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as…
Lifesaving Poems: Carol Rumens’s ‘Coming Home’
Some time ago I wrote about the importance to me of discovering, through my friend Duncan Kramer, the anthology The…
Lifesaving Poems: Mark Robinson’s ‘Domestic Bliss’
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of getting back in touch with Mark Robinson, poet, author and former editor…
Women Who Dye Their Hair
I first had the pleasure of reading this remarkable and delightful poem by Janet Fisher in 2001 in the company of a…
The First Lifesaving Poem: Alasdair Paterson’s ‘Fishermen’
Photo: Rob Starling ‘Fishermen’, by Alasdair Paterson, is one of my Lifesaving Poems. I first read it as a new teacher,…
Lifesaving Poems: Tony Hoagland’s ‘Jet’
Thanks to the recommendation of Naomi Jaffa (again) I had the smug pleasure of already knowing the work of Tony…
The poets I go back to
Colin Mallett, Sculptor The poets I go back to This article first appeared in the North magazine, in November 2007.…
Falling in love with Holub’s ‘Love’
I was lucky. I was taught English in one of those classrooms with complete sets of A Taste of Honey,…
Iain Crichton-Smith’s ‘Poetry’
It was summer. I found myself on the top floor of the library, on the recommendation of a friend:…
Finding ‘And Yet the Books’
One year I decided that I would decorate one of my teaching rooms with my collection of Poems on the…
Sideswiped by poetry
And sometimes you don’t know where it comes from. It appears as a heat, prickly, under your skin, your scalp.…
Lawrence Sail’s love
I first met Lawrence Sail at a private view at a gallery just outside Exeter. My family and I…
When one poet rescues another poet
I came across Hubert Moore’s fantastic book of poems The Hearing Room (Shoetstring, 2006) via my friend and neighbour Lawrence Sail. In…
Lifesaving Poems: John Burnside’s ‘A Private Life’
I found John Burnside‘s ‘A Private Life’ in a poetry magazine some years ago. I wasn’t much interested in…
Lifesaving Poems: Yorifumi Yaguchi’s Praying Mantis
Readers who have followed my Lifesaving Poems series will know by now that there isn’t and wasn’t a plan about…
Lifesaving Poems: James Schuyler’s ‘June 30, 1974’
June 30, 1974 for Jane and Joe Hazan Let me tell you that this weekend Sunday morning in the…
On Saying Goodbye to Primary PGCE Students
For the last nine years at the end of the first week in July I have been saying goodbye to…
Lifesaving Poems 