Lifesaving Poems: Mandy Sutter’s ‘Caring for the Environment’

In 1991 I made the decision to spend more of my time concentrating on the thing that fulfilled me the … More

Lifesaving Poems: Ian McMillan’s ‘On The Impossibility of Staying Alive’

On the Impossibility of Staying Alive They have found a new moon; it stands on my shoulder. They call it … More

AutobiographyThe sniff of the real, that’swhat I’d want to get how it feltto sit on ParliamentHill on a May eveningstudying … More

Now that we in Britain have started to think of ourselves as the greatest cycling nation since dinosaurs roamed the … More

On Valentine’s Day, 2006, I was was formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. Riddance is … More

It is nearly twenty years since I bought Peter Sansom’s Writing Poems. Among that wonderful book’s many delights I found … More

May the Silence Break Because you do not speakI know the shockof water encountering a rock. Supremacy of silence is … More

‘More Chelsea Than Sunderland’ was prompted by the remark of a doctor of a friend of mine, when asked to … More

I first heard Chris Southgate’s ‘High Fidelity’ sometime in 2005, when I was lucky enough to be part of a … More

I saw the sign above on a wall during a visit I recently made to a school to talk to … More

I found this poem in a collection of poems called The Matter of This World in a second hand … More

To celebrate World Book Day last week I read the poem below, by Thomas Lux, to my students. It … More

With Only One Life Hold with both hands The tray of every day And pass in turn Along this … More

Herod With Wikileaks in the headlines you could say the timing was perfect. Three Iraqi profs in … More

The Picnic It is the picnic with Ruth in the spring. Ruth was third on my list of seven girls … More

In 2002 I heard WN Herbert read ‘The Black Wet’ at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. This is not remarkable in itself, you might say, and … More

Photo: Derek Adams Some writers influence you through the pull of their imagination on your work, opening up new worlds … More

The Other Life in memory of Emily Riall I want to wake up in a house where the … More