Lifesaving Poems: Mark Strand’s ‘A Morning’

I fell in love with the poetry of Mark Strand via the enthusiasm of Rupert Loydell sometime in the late … More

Lifesaving Poems: CK Williams’s ‘Kin’

In the spring of 1999 I got the best education in poetry I have ever had. I was in Suffolk, … More

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

I first read ‘Prosser’ in the bookshop in Northwood, where I grew up, on my way into work and back … More

Isn’t Twitter a marvellous thing? Following a link on a tweet of Jeanne Duperreault last week I came across the Canadian Poetry Online … 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

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

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

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