Lifesaving Poems: Charles Causley’s ‘Who?’

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

Lifesaving Poems: Charles Simic’s ‘My Shoes’

It was the best of times. Jean Sprackland and I were tutoring the dream group at Totleigh Barton for a … More

It was the best of times. Jean Sprackland and I were tutoring a poetry course at Totleigh Barton, the Arvon … More

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

The Bath Festivals‘ Write Team was a creative writing project designed to develop pupil confidence and engagement in their learning. The … 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 have just come back from the Greenbelt Festival where I was delighted to give a talk about writing poetry … More

I met Jean Sprackland in 2000, somewhere in the bowels of the Poetry Society in London. We were meeting to … More

Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the University of Exeter’s CREATEseminar with Emma Metcalfe of Bath … More

‘I’ve learnt to be more confident with my ideas, because sometimes you have an idea that you just sort of … More

Below is a summary of some recent research on progress in pupils’ poetry writing and teachers’ metaphors of poetry writing … More

via youtube.com I used to be the one sitting quiet in the corner and now I am not afraid to … More

Photo: Derek Adams Some writers influence you through the pull of their imagination on your work, opening up new worlds … More

Ted Hughes died on 28 October, 1998, aged 68. He had been suffering with colon cancer. Just about everyone I … More

Like a Jules Verne novel, Dana Gioia’s famous essay “Can Poetry Matter” got the future’s big picture right, but the … More

I love the silence that descends on a classroom full of people who are all engaged in the act of … More