Even though I was expecting it, as the bullet train pulled into the platform it was still a shock to see the word ‘Hiroshima’ on the sign, in the same everyday font used for station names all over Japan. I will never forget the things I saw in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, or the […]
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My Chaucer Translation – Third Place in the Stephen Spender Prize
I’m delighted to report that a passage from my translation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde has been awarded third prize in this year’s Stephen Spender Prize, as announced in the Guardian. I’ve been working on the translation for over two years – the poem is over 8,000 lines long – and it’s great to receive […]
The New Yorker Poetry Podcast
Supposing you were sitting in a New York diner, and you couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between two men in the booth behind you. As you tuned into the American and Northern Irish accents, you realised you were eavesdropping on John Ashbery and Paul Muldoon shooting the breeze about poetry. Ashbery read a poem by […]
The Canterbury Tales – Mamas and the Papas Version (Plus reading in London Monday 17 November)
In a parallel universe, the Canterbury Tales were written and performed by the Mamas and the Papas. This video gives us a glimpse of that universe. Beautiful and mad. Courtesy of Lucian James. If you’re in London next Monday 17th November, you might like to pop along to the Troubadour where I’ll be reading a […]
Poem: ‘The Illusionist’, in The Rialto
My poem ‘The Illusionist’ has just been published in Issue 80 of The Rialto, which has been one of my favourite poetry magazines for years. The poem is loosely based on an experience of watching the filming of a TV magic show, one of those rare instances of what might be called poetic déjà vu: […]
