Lifesaving Lines: Why We Must Write, by Mark Halliday

I thought of it before I knew I had remembered it. Just the word ‘then’. Rereading and searching at speed … More

The Year of Living Deeply 5: The cool flash of what serious is

Remember when you got the news of the accident- or the illness- in the life of someone more laced into … More

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotyzing yourself and going over the … More

As I said recently, I have been moving. Not away, not abroad. But here, within the space that already exists, … More

after and with apologies to Mark Halliday The missing blog post has gone AWOL. Never sure of its place in … More

The poem that came into my mind on waking up this morning and hearing the General Election result is Mark … More

Reading Thomas Lux’s magnificent new Selected Poems reminded me recently that I first heard his poems before I read them. One of … More

I am delighted to be included in Lyrical, a new anthology of poems with my friends Cole Moreton, Katherine Venn, … More

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Robert Frost … 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 funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose … More

A very special thing happened this week: a large delivery of poetry pamphlets fromHappenstance Press arrived. It included the wonderful No … More

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

Over the last few days I have been thinking about the so-called New York school of poets, in posts about … More