The Reading List, week 6: Duhig, Kenny, Murray, Lehane

This post is the latest update to my ‘Reading List’ project begun in July 2015. The Lammas Hireling, Ian Duhig (Picador, 2003) From the opening poem ‘Blood’, an extended description of a self-styled skinhead-type hardman who turns out to be a fifteen-year-old who faints at the sight of a vaccination needle ‘in front of aRead more ⟶

Poetry Book Fair excitement, plus my poetry gets a leg up

September so often seems like the shortest month – why is that? At the moment it’s also looking like the craziest this year. We have to move out of our house by 23rd, which is little more than a couple of weeks away. And no, we haven’t started packing yet, because we don’t have anyRead more ⟶

The Reading List, week 5: McVety, Konig, James

Right now my reading material consists mainly of kitchen brochures, legal house-moving gumph and internet research on macerator toilets and whether you need planning permission to change a window on the rear of a building. So the antidote is of course a splash of poetry. ‘Splash’ being the right word, I think, consider the amount ofRead more ⟶

The Road Not Taken & FOMO

Just the other day Don Share posted on Twitter a link to a recording of Robert Frost reading ‘The Road Not Taken’. How wonderful to hear it in the poet’s voice. Here it is on YouTube: Matthew Hollis, in his 2011 biography of Edward Thomas, Now All Roads Lead to France, tells of Thomas’s distress atRead more ⟶