Heaney’s Pedagogy

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

Lifesaving Poems: Geoff Hattersley’s ‘The Only Son at the Fish ‘n’ Chip Shop’

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, expanseof polished floor. It’s where we learnedto wait: … 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

Ultramarinefor Philip ArcherLooking for the perfect blue,water to swim in, not through,to fill his sea, his massive bowlof hand-thick bronze … More

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

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

I first encountered Siân Hughes‘s poems sitting around a table with some talented teenage poets at the Arvon Foundation‘s writing … More