I am Fighting

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

Lifesaving Poems: Michael Symmons Roberts’s ‘Ultramarine’

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

Here is a revelation: I did not always adore the work of Frank O’Hara. I had pause to consider why … More

You make the thing because you love the thing and you love the thing because someone else loved it enough … More

Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’. … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I … More

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems … More

The Next Big Thing I have been been tagged by poet and blogger Abegail Morley to answer set questions relating to my memoir … More

I was formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, on Valentine’s Day, 2006. I was 42. … More

Mary At first a fluttering then a kick, his fist pummelling my ribcage when I knelt to pray. They … More

ProsserIn winter two kinds of fields on the hillsoutside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slipsrising overnight out of … More

I have just come back from the Greenbelt Festival where I was delighted to give a talk about writing poetry … More

Caring for the EnvironmentIn Wonderland, they say ‘Drink Me’but in Leeds they shoulder the bin asidesaying ‘Take me to the … More

The Birkdale Nightingale(Bufo calamito – the Natterjack toad)On Spring nights you can hear themtwo miles away, calling their matesto the … More

High FidelityThe man sits above the tracksat Bristol Parkway. He drinks tea,studies the distance.He notes the numbers of trains.With the … More

A Letter to Peter LeviReading your poems I am awareof translucencies, of birds hoveringover estuaries, of glass being spun for … More