Influences: Duncan Kramer

I met the furniture designer Duncan Kramer at summer camp. Not as kids but as what we laughingly called leaders. … More

Influences: Hugo Williams

I’m talking about real influence now –Raymond Carver This is the first in a new series of blog posts about people … More

I have not read a book in six months -Raymond Carver, ‘Drinking While Driving’ I can still remember the shock … More

Locus Scolus: The New York School of Poets is a thing of wonder and beauty. Named after a 1914 French novel by Raymond … More

I have been thinking a lot recently about final lines of poems. I’ve always been fond of Seamus Heaney’s comment about … More

Sometimes I think it’s gone forever -Ken Smith I want to write a poem, Seamus Heaney says, but I have … More

Dear Anthony (I will never get used to calling you Tony) Here are some words of advice from your nearing-fifty-year-old … More

These are the most read Lifesaving Poems posts of 2013. Mary Oliver, ‘The Journey’ I first read this on … More

Two readings stood out for me in 2013. The first was at an arts centre in the middle of nowhere … More

In the spring of 1998 I wrote to Seamus Heaney. I asked him to consider writing a Foreword to the … More

A comment Mark Robinson made in the days following Seamus Heaney’s death in August resonated with me. He said he … More

I became interested in Robert Lowell’s poetry because of the criticism of Seamus Heaney. I had tried reading him before, … More

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

‘A Lyric Afterwards’ was the poem in which I finally got Tom Paulin. I had been given a tape of him … More

I can remember exactly where I was when I first read ‘Early Summer’. It was on the balcony of … More

I think my first bout of Poetry Exhaustion occurred sometime after my A levels. Our English paper was quite advanced for its … More

Some time ago I wrote about the importance to me of discovering, through my friend Duncan Kramer, the anthology The … More

One year I decided that I would decorate one of my teaching rooms with my collection of Poems on the … More