Losing my ambition

Towards the end of my treatment for cancer in 2006 I had one of the most profound conversations of my … More

Lifesaving Poems: Billy Collins’s ‘Morning’

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

I have been thinking a lot recently about the career trajectory of poets, including my own, whose work briefly becomes visible … More

I wrote recently about poets who disappear from view, specifically Susannah Amoore, from Faber’s Poetry Introduction 6. My point is far … More

Sometimes people, including poets, ask me how my writing is going. The difference between a poet and a non-poet asking … More

An Upstairs KitchenIt is strange that I used to thinkthe summers were best in this kitchenhigh in the back of … More

Seven Ways of Reading Gillian Allnutt: How The Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe; 216pp; £12) 1 It’s … More

I treated myself to Seth Godin‘s newish book The Icarus Deception recently. It is both dense and light, profound and easy to … More

Ultramarinefor Philip ArcherLooking for the perfect blue,water to swim in, not through,to fill his sea, his massive bowlof hand-thick bronze … More

I want to live – Sharon Olds The most intense reading group I ever belonged to wasn’t really a reading … More

Sometimes you do not get a poem, or what a poet is up to, straight away. In the case of … More

One of the pleasures of being alive is reading John Ash. Think of a prize-winning poet, someone you think of … More

Apart from e e cummings and the genius Anon, one of my chief discoveries in the Voices and Junior Voices series that I … More

I I first came across e e cummings’s ‘in Just’ in an anthology, Wordscapes, edited by Barry Maybury (OUP, 1971). … More

I first encountered Siân Hughes‘s poems sitting around a table with some talented teenage poets at the Arvon Foundation‘s writing … More

8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970poemTom Raworth (from Jumpstart, ed. Cliff Yates, Poetry Society, 1999) As I say in my previous blog post, … More

Birth of the FoalAs May was opening the rosebuds,elder and lilac beginning to bloom.it was time for the mare to … More

The funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose … More