As the summer holiday season takes hold, I am posting an old blog post or two from the archive. See … More
Tag: Mark Strand
The Year of Living Deeply 16: I have carried it with me each day
I have carried it with me each day, that sense of shame about the fact that I write, that it … More
The Year of Living Deeply 3: Mark Strand’s Weather of Words
When I first read and began thinking about The Year of Living Deeply one of my instant reactions concerned the impact … More
The Year of Living Deeply 7: Another chance meeting with Ashbery
I was in a waiting room, having cycled, a bit out of breath, a book on my knee, trying to … More
In Praise of Rupert
Rupert Loydell is shouting at the countryside. I have got up at sparrow-fart to drive him to the Blandford … More
Some found poems
Recently I have featured prose writing by various writers, reshaping them in the form of found poems. Annie Dillard on … More
What it’s like to be human, by Mark Strand
If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we’d live in … More
Mark Strand on reading poetry -a found poem
Sometimes poems aren’t literal representations of anything. Sometimes a poem just exists as something else in the universe that you … More
When I read poetry -by Mark Strand
When I read poetry I want … More
Lifesaving poems of summer
Now that we might finally be getting one, I found myself wondering recently how many of my Lifesaving Poems choices were about … More
Because failure is assured
Recently I have been reading the exquisite prose of Janna Malamud Smith, in her book-length meditation on creativity: An Absorbing Errand: … More
‘When I read poetry’: in memory of Mark Strand
I am sad because the great American poet Mark Strand has died. Among the tributes to him in the last … More
Lifesaving poems of summer
Now that we have finally had one in the UK, I found myself wondering recently how many of my Lifesaving Poems choices … More
When poets don’t appear
I have been thinking a lot recently about the career trajectory of poets, including my own, whose work briefly becomes visible … More
Lifesaving Poems: Deryn Rees-Jones’s ‘What It’s Like To Be Alive’
Last week I read Antony Dunn‘s marvellous essay about his poetics, ‘To Tell You the Truth’ (from In Their Own … More
Lifesaving Poems: Mark Strand’s ‘A Morning’
I fell in love with the poetry of Mark Strand via the enthusiasm of Rupert Loydell sometime in the late … More
Lifesaving Poems
I was struck by a remark of Seamus Heaney in an interview he gave some years ago now. He was … More