The fame question

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

New Year Letter

Dear Anthony (I will never get used to calling you Tony) Here are some words of advice from your nearing-fifty-year-old … More

If you’re not enough without the gold medal, you’ll never be enough with it. – John Candy, Cool Runnings I did not … More

I met Evangeline Paterson once, in the early Nineties, at a workshop in London. Rupert Loydell suggested I went as … More

In 1991 I made the decision to teach part-time so that I could put poetry more at the centre of … More

Occasionally the entrance of a poem into your life is a combination of a series of tiny events, each of … More

As I said the other day, Geoffrey Summerfield’s Worlds is one of the most important books in my life. As I … More

I once heard Stephen Knight say ‘If I am reading well then I am writing well.’ It was a Q … More

When I speak to trainee primary school teachers about their views of poetry I am often struck by their divergent … More

I found John Burnside‘s ‘A Private Life’ in a poetry magazine some years ago. I wasn’t much interested in … More

It is odd to speak of missing someone you never met, but this is how I feel about the American … More

Love for Now did not begin with an idea but an illness. As I have written elsewhere, there wasn’t a plan. I … More

The Bath Festivals‘ Write Team was a creative writing project designed to develop pupil confidence and engagement in their learning. The … More

Towards the end of my treatment for cancer in 2006 I had one of the most profound conversations of my … More

In 2007 Sue Dymoke, Andrew Lambirth and I got together and decided we were going to apply to the ESRC … More

Sometimes people, including poets, ask me how my writing is going. The difference between a poet and a non-poet asking … More

I wrote here a couple of days ago about my aversion to using war metaphor to describe cancer. Judging from … More

I came across Michael Symmons Roberts‘s ‘Ultramarine’ during a stint as poetry editor for Third Way magazine. Like nearly everything … More