Fairnie

I met Fairnie somewhere round the back of Richard Nicholson (or was it Rupert Loydell?) sometime in the very early … More

Guest blog post: In praise of Joan Mitchell, by Tamar Yoseloff

Joan Mitchell looks to be the only artist of her generation, man or woman, who produced a big, abstract, painterly … More

I am completely torn apart -Rupert Loydell When I first read Raymond Carver’s Fires I loved and understood all of it, … More

I was at a thing recently. Not my thing, a good thing. Luminosity filled the evening. In the pouring of … More

My main memory of watching The West Wing is the way Martin Sheen would wrap up discussions with his staff by … More

I am at a thing. It is not my thing, it is someone else’s thing. Poets are there. People I … More

[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man … More

You go a talk by a Leading Poet. No one you know is there, but still you sit at the … More

I listened to the most wonderful radio programme about failure the other day. It featured Anne Enright talking with clear-eyed … More

Lately I have been pondering the practice of paying attention, vis-à-vis my habit of keeping a notebook to capture impressions, … More

Readers of this blog will know I have been thinking a lot about stationery recently. (Actually, that is something of … More

My blog post yesterday about the stationery thing provoked more responses than I ever imagined it would. Among the … More

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