Waiting to be picked

If you’re not enough without the gold medal, you’ll never be enough with it. – John Candy, Cool Runnings I did not … More

Lifesaving Poems: Kate Bingham’s ‘Things I Learned at University’

Things I Learned at University How to bike on cobblestones and where to signal right. How to walk through doors … More

A comment Mark Robinson made in the days following Seamus Heaney’s death in August resonated with me. He said he … More

The Only Son at the Fish ‘n’ Chip Shop He lived with his mother till he was forty-five … More

Rondeau Redouble There is so little left. The room is bare. She’ll strip his sheets and blankets by and … More

Psalm How leaky are the borders of man-made states! How many clouds float over them scot-free, how much … More

Timetable We all remember school, of course: the lino warming, shoe bag smell, expanse of polished floor. It’s where we … More

I met Evangeline Paterson once, in the early Nineties, at a workshop in London. Rupert Loydell suggested I went as … More

Laura Apol’s ‘The Switch’ is a witty poem which explores the tension between primal, and sometimes unforeseen, forces and the … More

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

In 1991 I made the decision to teach part-time so that I could put poetry more at the centre of … More

As I said the other day, Geoffrey Summerfield’s Worlds is one of the most important books in my life. As I … More

Sometime in 1997 I went to hear Kevin Crossley-Holland give a reading at Exeter Central Library. I’d heard he was … More

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

Atlas There is a kind of love called maintenanceWhich stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks … More

In 2007 Sue Dymoke, Andrew Lambirth and I got together and decided we were going to apply to the ESRC … More

I came across Michael Symmons Roberts‘s ‘Ultramarine’ during a stint as poetry editor for Third Way magazine. Like nearly everything … More

I want to live – Sharon Olds The most intense reading group I ever belonged to wasn’t really a reading … More