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 […]
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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: […]
Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours
We all know vaguely who the troubadours were: those minstrels with (in Ezra Pound’s words) “trunk-hose and the light guitar” who wandered through the middle-ages, serenading ladies outside their windows and dodging jealous glances (and arrows) from the lord of the castle. They mastered the game of courtly love, or fin amor, and inspired generations […]
Machi Tawara, Mount Fuji Tanka Calendar
Last summer I had the pleasure of meeting Machi Tawara when she visited the UK to read at the Ledbury Festival. She kindly gave us a copy of her latest book Mount Fuji Tanka Calendar – a collection of tanka for children and adults, with illustrations of Mount Fuji by U.G. Sato. From the publisher’s […]