Lifesaving Poems: Derek Mahon’s ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’

Everything is Going to be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplatethe clouds clearing beyond the dormer … More

Lifesaving Poems: Naomi Jaffa’s ‘Some of the Usual’

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

I met Peter Carpenter in the summer of 2001 at the Arvon Foundation’s Totleigh Barton writing centre. I was at … More

Riddance is published today. It is my fourth full-length collection of poems and my third with Worple Press. You can … More

I Am a Finn I am standing in the post office, about to mail a package back to Minnesota, to … More

Night Drive The smells of ordinarinessWere new on the night drive through France;Rain and hay and woods on the airMade … More

I have just come back from the Greenbelt Festival where I was delighted to give a talk about writing poetry … More

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

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

I was sad to read yesterday via Twitter that the leading Dutch poet Rutger Kopland has died, aged 77. He … More

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

I met Jean Sprackland in 2000, somewhere in the bowels of the Poetry Society in London. We were meeting to … More

Above the desk where I am writing this is a shelf on which sits more than a yard of poetry … More

Last night saw the launch of Magma 53 at the Troubadour Coffee House in London with guest readers and Lifesaving … More

A year ago I began the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts. I got the idea for it after reading … More