Lifesaving Poems: Sean O’Brien’s ‘Before’

To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas in … More

Their Age Now

I went home the other day. I mean home-home, where I was born, and where my parents still live. … More

I am in the pub with Rupert. We are talking about planning a thing. It’s definitely going to happen. A … More

I’m grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you. –Raymond Carver (‘For Tess’) A kind, wise man once … More

Hysteria As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her … More

Wind This house has been far out at sea all night,The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,Winds stampeding the … More

When I speak to trainee primary school teachers about their views of poetry I am often struck by their divergent … More

I count myself lucky to have been taught by a team of English teachers who I have no doubt … More

To safe and almost universal silence I published How Far From Here is Home? (Stride) a few days before Christmas in … More

Photo: Rob Starling ‘Fishermen’, by Alasdair Paterson, is one of my Lifesaving Poems. I first read it as a new teacher, … More

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

Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’. … More

I was struck by a remark of Seamus Heaney in an interview he gave some years ago now. He was … More