The third poem in our Gaza Advent series is by Batool Abu Akleen. This is how I cook my grief, … More
Tag: Being a Poet
Gaza Advent 2: Palestine Still Lives, by Sarah al Bohassi
The second poem in our Gaza Advent series is by Sarah al Bohassi. Palestine Still Lives, by Sarah al Bohassi … More
Gaza Advent 1: Detaining a poem, by Dareen Tatour
Welcome to this series of Gaza Advent blog posts. Every Sunday during Advent I will post a link to a … More
Gaza Advent – a new series of blog posts starting tomorrow
Starting tomorrow, to mark the season of Advent, a new blog series celebrating the work of poets from Gaza and … More
This was Canada
I was listening to Radio 4 the other day. (You might think this unremarkable, but it was. I still have … More
Lifesaving Lines: You are not alone, by Thomas A. Clark
Dear Thomas A. Clark I won’t lie, until recently I hadn’t heard of you. (We could talk for a long … More
The jump
But at some point you have to make the jump. How does this work in practice? First I am struck … More
This is writing!
The occupational hazard of going to things where other writers are also present is that they will always at some … More
There was a door
I do not have brilliant form with Louise Glück. I seem to remember the Poetry Book Society choosing or recommending … More
On being useless at social media
A colleague of mine said to me at the end of a lecture the other day that she wished I … More
On not being on the radio
A lovely radio producer, whom I shall call Julian, emailed me to ask if I would like to talk on … More
When you can’t, it’s impossible
I can’t write poems in recent weeks either. It’s not the first time it’s happened. And it’s not worth going … More
New year blog maintenance
Happy new year, everyone. I’ve been doing a bit of tidying up on some of the pages of this blog. … More
Timorous or bold
Timorous or bold are the first three words of Seamus Heaney’s famous (to me) ‘Elegy’ for Robert Lowell. They’ve been … More
‘I hate this time of year’
Photo credit: Andrew Rumsey This, from a person I have met a handful of times, our dogs nosing each other … More
Uniformed comedians
I’ve been saying Tom Paulin’s line about ‘uniformed comedians’ a lot this summer. I don’t really want to go into … More
Against plashing
Somewhere right at the beginning of all this, before the internet, when everything was scarce, not least poetry, a word … More
On not keeping up
Like the man Hemingway describes going bankrupt gradually and then suddenly, I realised the other day that I can no … More
Lifesaving Poems 