Goodbye to being a poet

For reasons I cannot go into here, I am finishing 2019 in a tired frame of mind. (I am not … More

Afterwards

Greenbelt Festival, Friday 23rd August Outside, it is a very warm 28º. Inside our tented venue the canvass and stage … More

Thank you to the heroic bloggers and poets Josephine Corcoran and Robin Houghton for their recentish posts about their desks. … More

I am delighted to announce that my new book of essays Deck Shoes is now on sale. You can buy it direct … More

Paul Brookes at Wombwell Rainbow has posted an interview with me about my reading and writing life, my influences … More

I am love with making notes. I makes notes in the morning, at bedtime, in the private places, in meetings, … More

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You are close at hand yet very far away. So long since I have … More

I write a lot of things down. In part this is because I no longer remember anything. If I do … More

A little taster for you. This is an essay from my forthcoming book Deck Shoes. – I was having … More

– –for Peter and Amanda Carpenter Yesterday a miraculous thing happened. I took delivery of a box containing copies … More

As the holiday season continues I repost this list of various found poems that I have made over the … More

There isn’t much left to be done. The proof reading, the book blurbs (they take longer than the poems), the … More

Some of you will have seen this blog post before. It is a taster of some of the contents … More

I think I am done. I think. I think, therefore I am done? I think I am. No doubt there … More

I have been doing the proofs to my new books. And I am scared. Scared that I have got it … More

‘What are you doing?’ says the book. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Doesn’t look like it.’ ‘Listening to the cricket,’ if you must know. … More

Poems hatch Poems hatch from memory, fantasy, the need to communicate with the living, the dead, the unborn. Poems come … More

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the ‘poets I go back to’ idea, that I first came across in … More

Dear James (may I call you James?) Though it’s been a while (at least ten years, maybe more) it feels as … More

This is the time of year when I traditionally think of Nick. Nick lived with us in our house in … More