Thursday 31 March 2016

Interviewed in the Daily Telegraph

I'm interviewed in the Daily Telegraph today about my book, A Sky Full Of Birds, which is out a week today, and about how birdwatching helped me cope with depression following the death of my older sister, Rebecca, in 2004. Many thanks to Joe Shute of the Telegraph for his sensitive handling of the interview, and I'm really proud of how both it and the book have turned out. Most of all, of course, I'm proud of my sister – I miss her every day.

Thursday 24 March 2016

Prac Crit

Edition six of Prac Crit is online now, with Karen Solie Stephan Burt and Luke Kennard the featured poets. Solie's a poet who's work I absolutely love, and Kennard isn't far behind, either. Lots of great insights to be found - give it a read.

Friday 18 March 2016

Skies, by Alison Brackenbury


This rather splendid book arrived in the post yesterday – Alison Brackenbury's latest collection, Skies, from Carcanet. You can read a lot more about it here, but suffice it to say that the poems I've already read from it are terrific.

Wednesday 2 March 2016

The High Window

The inaugural issue of The High Window, a new quarterly literary journal, has been published, and you can find it here.

Poets with work in the first issue include Ian Duhig, AF Harrold, Roy Marshall, Abegail Morley, Richard Skinner and Andrew Shields, and there's also a feature on two collage poems by Helen Ivory, an essay by Ian Duhig, translations, and reviews, including one of Martin Malone's new collection, Cur. All things considered, an auspicious start – I'll be keeping an eye on how it develops.

Tuesday 1 March 2016

Happy St David's Day

To mark St David's Day, Wales has got a new national poet – Ifor ap Glyn. You can read more about it here.

And (you knew this was coming, didn't you?), I'm going to mark the day by reading some of the work of my favourite Welsh poet, RS Thomas.

It's not difficult to find his poems all over the internet (although better still, buy the Collected Poems and Later Collected Poems), but to get you started, here's Lore.