This was a Facebook post from a couple of years back; I re-read it and decided it really belonged on the blog. Just a personal thought. A poem, to my mind, is or should be an organic whole. That being so, it doesn't actually exist on the lyric heights for the whole of its length; it has peaks and troughs. Every line does not coruscate at you, ( Read more... )

Now and then, a poem does something you think truly brilliant - until you realise that hardly any bugger has noticed or understood it. (It's particularly irritating if you happen to have written the poem in question.) Though actually, the one that has always had me tearing my hair about the obtuseness of the gentle reader is by Robert Frost, a ( Read more... )

Hm. Am in two minds about this article. On the one hand, I agree with him about the poem. I thought it was awful too, for the reasons given and for others (hate the jog-trot, nursery-rhyme rhythms) and couldn't fathom what the judges saw in it. (Mind you, like all the other unsuccessful entrants I'm probably biased.) I particularly identify with ( Read more... )

Well, the Forward Prize shortlists for 2013 are out now. I helped compile said lists in June, together with Jeanette Winterson, David Mills, Paul Farley and Sam West. Some thoughts on the process here ( Read more... )

Greatly chuffed that Rosie Shepperd, who gave me an interview and some poems for the blog here, is a winner in the Poetry Business competition and has a pamphlet out with Salt next year. Rosie is a really exciting, different, individual poet. I said in the interview that if I had to choose one word to describe her poems, it would be the 19th- ( Read more... )

I've been thinking for a while about an email I got last year. I'd judged a poetry competition, the winners of which, with my comments on them, are online here. Soon afterwards, I got an email enquiry from a gentleman who was clearly well-read and highly educated, a retired medical specialist fluent in two languages (English was not his first ( Read more... )

The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now PrizeSo much to like about this ( Read more... )

- well, that happens all the time but not usually in a big literary competition. Philip was my colleague but Mike was my student so I'll have to back him; anyway his novel Pocket Notebook is such a cracker ( Read more... )

There are umpteen poetry competitions and I don't usually bother flagging them up, cos those who go in for them tend to know about them.

But this is a new one on me, and one that actually aims to do some good. Educating Kenyan Orphans is a charity whose objectives are:

# To advance the education of the children who have been orphaned mostly by ( Read more... )

My latest collection Long-Haul Travellers has been shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize and yes, I'm quite pleased (at the very least you get a day out at the BBC's expense in Brecon, which is a nice town ( Read more... )