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

Such fun

We are driving to a thing. We are lost. It is a lunch thing, so the children are in tow. … More

I am completely torn apart -Rupert Loydell When I first read Raymond Carver’s Fires I loved and understood all of it, … More

We had been in the new city for two months. The house we had bought was even more of a … More

The Sofas, Fogs and Cinemas I have lived it, and lived it, My nervous, luxury civilisation, My sugar-loving nerves … More

I followed a lead, nudged by a hunch, and it brought me here. The book is In Their Own Words (edited by … More

I was at a thing recently. Not my thing, a good thing. Luminosity filled the evening. In the pouring of … More

My main memory of watching The West Wing is the way Martin Sheen would wrap up discussions with his staff by … More

I am at a thing. It is not my thing, it is someone else’s thing. Poets are there. People I … More

[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man … More

I am at a thing. I have been asked to read a couple of poems. It is not my thing, … More

I have said goodbye to the poem. For a while, a long while, we were not even speaking. After the … More

The poem is not happy. It glares up at me, its eyes spitting fury. ‘How dare you take me in … More

I am being pursued by the poem. It has been there for several years now, asking to be written. I … More

You stick to the routines you have set up, notebook observations, voracious reading, sending the work out to mags, even … More

You go a talk by a Leading Poet. No one you know is there, but still you sit at the … More

My blog post yesterday about the stationery thing provoked more responses than I ever imagined it would. Among the … More

Once upon a time I broke the rules and spoke with another poet (it doesn’t matter who) about a … More