The most fun I have ever seen a poet have at their own reading (with the possible exception of Jackie … More
Tag: Arvon Foundation
Lifesaving Poems: Charles Simic’s ‘My Shoes’
It was the best of times. Jean Sprackland and I were tutoring the dream group at Totleigh Barton for a … More
Lifesaving Poems: Matthew Hollis’s ‘Wintering’
It was the best of times. Jean Sprackland and I were tutoring a poetry course at Totleigh Barton, the Arvon … More
Lifesaving Poems: Sean O’Brien’s ‘Before’
To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas in … More
Lawrence Sail’s love
The Lack of You Level as any water, constant as clock-time,the lack of you has occupied the house.It is an … More
Chemo reading
I wrote here recently about losing my ambition as a writer. In case readers are in any doubt, the stuff … More
Lifesaving Poems: Siân Hughes’s ‘Results’
I first encountered Siân Hughes‘s poems sitting around a table with some talented teenage poets at the Arvon Foundation‘s writing … More
Lifesaving Poems: Galway Kinnell’s ‘Saint Francis and the Sow’
Saint Francis and the SowThe budstands for all things,even for those things that don’t flower,for everything flowers, from within, of … More
Lifesaving Poems: Rutger Kopland’s ‘I Cavalli di Leonardo’
I Cavalli di LeonardoAll those sketches he left behind –endless series of repetitions: bunches of muscles, sinews,knuckles, joints, the entire … More
