The poem always wins

You think it will be about your childhood. It turns out to be about an onion. Or a night in … More

It has gone

For now, at least, it has gone. The notebooks with promising phrases, the backs of envelopes with doodles: they are … More

Seven years ago I published The Year of Drinking Water, a pamphlet of poems, about my experience of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (Exeter … More

I met the furniture designer Duncan Kramer at summer camp. Not as kids but as what we laughingly called leaders. … More

The book is not in love with me. I shower it with love and promises of more stationery, but all … More

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

Don’t forget, this is inside us every day -Stephen Berg This is not happening. It happened. Past tense. One … More

I followed a lead, nudged by a hunch, and it brought me here. The book is In Their Own Words (edited by … 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

The poem is not happy. It glares up at me, its eyes spitting fury. ‘How dare you take me in … More

You stick to the routines you have set up, notebook observations, voracious reading, sending the work out to mags, even … 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

At the start of each academic year, usually when I have known them for a week or so, I make … More