A Fergus

My first reader was a man called Fergus. A friend of a flatmate at university, I never got to … More

The Next Swim

For a number of reasons –too much grief in my life, too sedentary, too much television, too out … More

In terms of my poetry world, 2015 has turned out to be a year of endings and legacies. The Poetry … More

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless many with a crayon in his mouth -Kurt Vonnegut A friend … More

Days Each one is a gift, no doubt, mysteriously placed in your waking hand or set upon your forehead moments … More

Well, it’s happening. Happened, I mean. Stuff I thought would last forever -film titles, the actors in them, scenes of … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems posts in May, 2011. Below is a list of the twenty most popular poems … More

The Journey One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice–though … More

In February, 1999 I was sitting in a car park with Naomi Jaffa when she asked me what I … More

I have been thinking a lot recently about the career trajectory of poets, including my own, whose work briefly becomes visible … More

Like a lot of people I first came across Carol Ann Duffy‘s ‘Words, Wide Night’ as a Poems on the … More

I came across ‘Elegy for Jane’ having found poems by Theodore Roethke in Ted Hughes’ classic anthology of poems and … More

I was struck by a remark of Seamus Heaney in an interview he gave some years ago now. He was … More