Lifesaving Poems: Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘No worst, there is none’

I treated myself to Seth Godin‘s newish book The Icarus Deception recently. It is both dense and light, profound and easy to … More

On reading poetry to dying people

I want to live – Sharon Olds The most intense reading group I ever belonged to wasn’t really a reading … More

The funniest thing you will ever read about Elizabeth Bishop (or teaching, or anything else) is Mark Halliday‘s essay Moose … More

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

I came across ‘Elegy for Jane’ having found poems by Theodore Roethke in Ted Hughes’ classic anthology of poems and … More

I have written before that there are a wide range of reasons for including the poems I have in my … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems … More

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

Now that we in Britain have started to think of ourselves as the greatest cycling nation since dinosaurs roamed the … More

I am a little late in writing these reflections prompted by the tenth anniversary of 9/11. What I want … More

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