All Blogposts

  • 30,000 students but no-one has to share a desk!

    30,000 students but no-one has to share a desk!

    My main news is that, along with 30,000 other people world-wide, I’ve signed up for, and am into my second week of, the free, on-line, ten-week taster course in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, or ModPo, offered by the University of Pennsylvania using the Coursera on-line platform and featuring the charismatic and hugely knowledgeable Professor of Literature,… Read more

  • On Being Shortlisted for The Bridport Prize (Flash Fiction)

    On Being Shortlisted for The Bridport Prize (Flash Fiction)

    There was a delicious flurry of excitement on Twitter yesterday afternoon when several people tweeted about being shortlisted for The Bridport Prize.  The actual winners won’t be announced until October 14th but those shortlisted have been notified.  None of these people are winners (although they certainly aren’t losers!) and won’t be published in the Winners’… Read more

  • When is the best time to workshop a poem?

    When is the best time to workshop a poem?

    Anita Chapman’s interesting blogpost about the benefits and drawbacks of taking excerpts from the first draft of a novel to a writing workshop has got me thinking about when it’s best to take poetry.  At what stage of the writing process will scrutiny by others benefit a poem? It’s a relevant question for me because I’ve… Read more

  • Review of ‘Riddance’ by Anthony Wilson

    Review of ‘Riddance’ by Anthony Wilson

    Reading the poems in Anthony Wilson’s Riddance I had the sensation of walking through a large house, switching on lamps and spotlights to illuminate not immediately visible nooks and crannies.  Nowhere is there one garish light explaining everything at once and, although the book is divided into five sections, I felt inclined to move freely… Read more

  • Well, that was a first…

    Well, that was a first…

    …or perhaps it’s a sign of things to come.  I’m usually a slow, slow writer (took me FIVE YEARS to finish ‘Honeymoon’,  a runner-up at Bridport in 2010 – I’ve written about that here) but this week I’ve dashed off two new poems, both inspired by these quick-as-a-flash poetry projects on the internet: The Queen… Read more

  • Hey Presto! Poems have arrived in my inbox.

    It’s been almost two weeks since I started a separate blog for poems, ‘And Other Poems’.  At first I thought this would simply be an uncluttered space for my own poems but I quickly decided that I wanted to include other people’s work.  How, then, to acquire poems?  Could I just select poems that I… Read more