Lifesaving Poems: John Ashbery’s ‘Down by the Station Early in the Morning’

I was thinking recently about John Ashbery. As I say in my post about my poetry highlights of 2012 one of … More

When poetry stopped me breathing in 2012

I have just been asked by Abegail Morley to send her a list of my poetry books of 2012 for … More

I fell in love with the poetry of Mark Strand via the enthusiasm of Rupert Loydell sometime in the late … 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

In the spring of 1999 I got the best education in poetry I have ever had. I was in Suffolk, … More

Isn’t Twitter a marvellous thing? Following a link on a tweet of Jeanne Duperreault last week I came across the Canadian Poetry Online … More

Everything is Going to be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplatethe clouds clearing beyond the dormer … More

The first thing I do when a new copy of The North, Rialto or Smiths Knoll lands on the doormat … More

I Am a Finn I am standing in the post office, about to mail a package back to Minnesota, to … More

Night Drive The smells of ordinarinessWere new on the night drive through France;Rain and hay and woods on the airMade … More

In 1991 I made the decision to spend more of my time concentrating on the thing that fulfilled me the … More

On the Impossibility of Staying Alive They have found a new moon; it stands on my shoulder. They call it … More

AutobiographyThe sniff of the real, that’swhat I’d want to get how it feltto sit on ParliamentHill on a May eveningstudying … More

Now that we in Britain have started to think of ourselves as the greatest cycling nation since dinosaurs roamed the … More

I was sad to read yesterday via Twitter that the leading Dutch poet Rutger Kopland has died, aged 77. He … More

It is nearly twenty years since I bought Peter Sansom’s Writing Poems. Among that wonderful book’s many delights I found … More

I met Jean Sprackland in 2000, somewhere in the bowels of the Poetry Society in London. We were meeting to … More

Above the desk where I am writing this is a shelf on which sits more than a yard of poetry … More