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

Kin“You make me sick!” this, with rancor, vehemence, disgust—again, “You hear me? Sick!”with rancor, vehemence, disgust again, with rage and … More

Some of the UsualStanding in the kitchen before breakfast, not including some of the usual —what to buy in Budgens … More

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