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

A note from Seamus Heaney

During the Christmas period I am reposting some old posts from my archive. Wishing all my readers a very happy … More

Now that we have finally had one in the UK, I found myself wondering recently how many of my Lifesaving Poems choices … More

When I visit schools to read and talk about poetry there is often some sort of Q and A following … More

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

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

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

Who? Who is that child I see wandering, wandering down by the side of the quivering stream? Why does … More

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

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

I first encountered Siân Hughes‘s poems sitting around a table with some talented teenage poets at the Arvon Foundation‘s writing … More

As I say in my previous blog post, I owe my knowledge of ‘8.06 p.m. June 10th 1970’ to the … More

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