Lifesaving Lines: The Trees, by Philip Larkin

Early May. Sitting in the bay window upstairs at Cricklewood revising for finals. My pink vest and purple jeans phase. … More

More places of hope

I said here a couple of years ago that Natalie Jabbar’s blog of curated poems each April is like a … More

But first came Plath. After Ursuala Le Guin, the only female author we studied (OK – Jane Austen). Her name … More

Our tiny minds blown by ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, ‘Spelt From Sibyl’s Leaves’ and ‘As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire’, we … More

On a spring day as far from ‘late in dour October’ it would be harder to imagine, James Schuyler’s The … More

I am delighted to announce that Blue Diode have accepted my new poetry manuscript and will publish my sixth collection, … More

So this is a bit spooky. All week I had in mind these marvellous final words from Lucille Clifton’s poem … More

For several weeks before Christmas I had these words from Ian McMillan’s peerless ‘Stone, I Presume’ rattling around my head. … More

Just a few hours left of 2021. Time to reflect on what this year has been. Until a week or … More

Call the Midwife What I like in a man: not showing desperate – though that’s what he was. Old enough … More

During December 2019 I blogged a series of poems to celebrate the season of Advent. Some of these were about … More

Two great lines for the price of one (it is Christmas, after all) this week, from Marie Howe’s extraordinary poem … More

I have been thinking a lot about the poetry of Julia Darling this week. Her work became essential to me … More

Thank you to everyone who has commented to me either publicly or in private about my new series of blog … More

We have a lot of windows. I sit next to them at this time of the year thinking, Just five … More

I have been thinking a lot this week about a line from Tomas Tranströmer’s masterpiece, ‘Alone’. (I have also blogged … More

The line that’s been buzzing round my head this week is the final phrase from Michael Laskey’s miracle poem of … More

Recently, my relationship with Wednesdays has changed. It’s quite a long story, and one I don’t want to trouble you … More