Lifesaving poems of summer

As the summer holiday season takes hold, I am posting an old blog post or two from the archive. See … More

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