I thought of it before I knew I had remembered it. Just the word ‘then’. Rereading and searching at speed … More
Tag: Mark Halliday
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
The voice you hear when you write
Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotyzing yourself and going over the … More
Except the Americans
As I said recently, I have been moving. Not away, not abroad. But here, within the space that already exists, … More
The missing blog post
after and with apologies to Mark Halliday The missing blog post has gone AWOL. Never sure of its place in … More
Why must we write?
The poem that came into my mind on waking up this morning and hearing the General Election result is Mark … More
Dusk
Reading Thomas Lux’s magnificent new Selected Poems reminded me recently that I first heard his poems before I read them. One of … More
Lyrical
I am delighted to be included in Lyrical, a new anthology of poems with my friends Cole Moreton, Katherine Venn, … More
Coming home to Aldeburgh
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. Robert Frost … More
Foal Failure
I first came across ‘Birth of the Foal’ at the recommendation of the great Cliff Yates. He told me he’d been … 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: Mark Halliday’s ‘The Missing Poem’
A very special thing happened this week: a large delivery of poetry pamphlets fromHappenstance Press arrived. It included the wonderful No … More
Lifesaving Poems
I was struck by a remark of Seamus Heaney in an interview he gave some years ago now. He was … More
My favourite review of my favourite book of poems
Over the last few days I have been thinking about the so-called New York school of poets, in posts about … More