When poetry stopped me breathing in 2012

I have just been asked by Abegail Morley to send her a list of my poetry books of 2012 for … More

Lifesaving Poems: Mark Strand’s ‘A Morning’

A MorningI have carried it with me each day: that morning I tookmy uncle’s boat from the brown water coveand … 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

Yesterday was a good day and a sad say. A good day because Smiths Knoll, the poetry magazine edited by … More

ProsserIn winter two kinds of fields on the hillsoutside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slipsrising overnight out of … More

Photograph in a Stockholm Newspaper For March 13, 1910Here is a family so little famoustheir names were not recorded. They … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems posts in June 2011, back when I was using Posterous for this blog. … More

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

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

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

Caring for the EnvironmentIn Wonderland, they say ‘Drink Me’but in Leeds they shoulder the bin asidesaying ‘Take me to 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

BikeYou, who have borne three sonsof mine, still bear my weightroutinely, transporting me.An odd pair: your classic sparelines – elbows, … More

I Cavalli di LeonardoAll those sketches he left behind –endless series of repetitions: bunches of muscles, sinews,knuckles, joints, the entire … More