Lifesaving Poems: Robert Lowell’s ‘Epilogue’

I became interested in Robert Lowell’s poetry because of the criticism of Seamus Heaney. I had tried reading him before, … More

Lifesaving Poems: Ted Hughes’s ‘Wind’

Wind This house has been far out at sea all night,The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,Winds stampeding the … More

When I speak to trainee primary school teachers about their views of poetry I am often struck by their divergent … More

Who? Who is that child I see wandering, wandering down by the side of the quivering stream? Why does … More

I count myself lucky to have been taught by a team of English teachers who I have no doubt … More

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

I once saw Michael Rosen teach a theatre full of tearfully happy children and adults these wonderful nonsense word games … More

To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas in … More

I was lucky. I was taught English in one of those classrooms with complete sets of A Taste of Honey, … More

It was summer. I found myself on the top floor of the library, on the recommendation of a friend: … More

One year I decided that I would decorate one of my teaching rooms with my collection of Poems on the … More

I came across Hubert Moore’s fantastic book of poems The Hearing Room (Shoetstring, 2006) via my friend and neighbour Lawrence Sail. In … More

It is odd to speak of missing someone you never met, but this is how I feel about the American … More

Apart from e e cummings and the genius Anon, one of my chief discoveries in the Voices and Junior Voices series that I … More

I I first came across e e cummings’s ‘in Just’ in an anthology, Wordscapes, edited by Barry Maybury (OUP, 1971). … More

As I say in my previous blog post, I owe my knowledge of ‘8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970’ to the … More

I first came across ‘Birth of the Foal’ at the recommendation of the great Cliff Yates. He told me he’d been … More

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 4,329 films were submitted … More