This was just a crow

My Crow A crow flew into the tree outside my window. It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow. … More

Heal into time and other people

I have been thinking a lot recently about the gap between what is expected of us and what we think … More

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

Morning on Earth Morning on earth, light snow, and just when it was so warm, practically spring. But the thermometer … More

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

One CigaretteNo smoke without you, my fire.After you left,your cigarette glowed on in my ashtrayand sent up a long thread … More

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

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

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

Some of my favourite poetry books of all time are anthologies. Not the headline selections everybody has (and has to … More

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

I I first came across e e cummings’s ‘in Just’ in an anthology, Wordscapes, edited by Barry Maybury (OUP, 1971). … 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

On the Impossibility of Staying Alive They have found a new moon; it stands on my shoulder. They call it … More

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

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