Lifesaving Lines: The Death of Fred Clifton, by Lucille Clifton

So this is a bit spooky. All week I had in mind these marvellous final words from Lucille Clifton’s poem … More

Lifesaving Lines: Stone, I Presume, by Ian Mcmillan

For several weeks before Christmas I had these words from Ian McMillan’s peerless ‘Stone, I Presume’ rattling around my head. … More

As Planned

As Planned After the first glass of vodka you can accept just about anything of life even your own mysteriousness … More

and (Dear James)

  and (Dear James) it occurs to me now, just thinking out loud, that in a way Kenneth and Frank … More

Craving silence

‘So I was thinking,’ the book says. ‘Going anywhere nice for Christmas?’ ’Do you want a lift somewhere?’ I say. … More

Towards a model of poetry writing development

As promised last week, here is my presentation of the paper I co-wrote with Sue Dymoke in which we argue on … More

Lifesaving Poems: Tom Andrews’s ‘Reading Frank O’Hara in the Hospital’

Reading Frank O’Hara in the Hospital   1 The IV drips its slow news. So long, lean and turbulent morning! … More

Late January notebook

  […]       you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don’t you are … More

and (Dear James)

and (Dear James) it occurs to me now, just thinking out loud, that in a way Kenneth and Frank actually were … More

Kenneth Koch on the New York poets

  Being together so much and talking so much and writing poems and showing them to each other so much … 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

Lifesaving Poems: Rosemary Tonks’s ‘The Sofas, Fogs, and Cinemas’

The Sofas, Fogs, and Cinemas I have lived it, and lived it, My nervous, luxury civilisation, My sugar-loving nerves have … More

Inside Lifesaving Poems 2

  Artwork by Angus Joseph Alongside each poem in Lifesaving Poems is a short commentary about how I came across … More

All this sitting about in cafés

The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas   I have lived it, and lived it, My nervous, luxury civilisation, My sugar-loving nerves … More

Lifesaving Poems: Esther Morgan’s ‘Avocados’

I heard Michael Symmons Roberts give a magisterial reading from his book Drysalter recently. It was exemplary on so many levels, not … More

Lifesaving Poems:Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Poem’

  The funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose … More

Lifesaving Poems: Frank O’Hara’s ‘Why I am Not a Painter’

Here is a revelation: I did not always adore the work of Frank O’Hara. I had pause to consider why … More

Lifesaving Poems

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