Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Blog Posts

Below is a collection of my blog posts for the 2014 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. I will update it as I … 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

I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you. –Raymond Carver (‘For Tess’) A kind, wise man once … More

In February, 1999 I was sitting in a car park with Naomi Jaffa when she asked me what I … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I … More

In the spring of 1999 I got the best education in poetry I have ever had. I was in Suffolk, … More

The first thing I do when a new copy of The North, Rialto or Smiths Knoll lands on the doormat … More

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