Who would we be?, by Susan Sontag

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect … More

When poetry moved underground, by Czeslaw Milosz

When poets discover that their words refer only to other words and not to reality which must be described as … More

‘An amazing stillness this morning. A sense of impending exhaustion in the air. There was one robin as I went … More

A breath of our mouth Becomes the portrait of the world, The type of our thoughts And our feelings … More

Young poets Who don’t think of themselves As apprentices Are notorious For resisting influences. They’ve experienced The first stages Of … More

Consider what value, What meaning Is enclosed even In the smallest Of our daily habits, In the hundred possessions Which … More

Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone noticing. One evening in August you have an errand … More

In the last year, another government initiative has created a compulsory part of the curriculum: learning poetry by heart … More

Recently I have featured prose writing by various writers, reshaping them in the form of found poems. Annie Dillard on … More

If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we’d live in … More

Sometimes poems aren’t literal representations of anything. Sometimes a poem just exists as something else in the universe that you … More

‘Aren’t you going get the phone?’ I say. ‘It won’t be for me.’ With a little groan the book … More

The adventures of the book have now clocked up fifty blog posts. Here is a list of all of them, … More

In the summer of 1986, when he was poetry editor of New Statesman and not long after Writing Home had … More

I do not stammer, but some of my earliest memories of speaking at school (‘What are eight sevens, Wilson?’) are … More

A Rainy Morning A young woman in a wheelchair, wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain, is pushing … More

August 1914 What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart’s dear granary? The much we … More

By Any Other Name First, he called her My Little Aubergine as if she was … More