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There have been many great artistic collaborations over the years, Lennon and McCartney, Rogers and Astaire, Laurel and Hardy etc. etc. where both artists brought something extra to the mix.  Famously Ginger Rogers commented on her pairing with the magical Fred Astaire,’ I did all he did, but backwards and in high heels’.  Apocryphal or … Read more

I have been involved with a lovely project these last few months celebrating fifty years of the twinning of the German city of Dortmund and Leeds.  The demon-organiser Peter Spafford who presents arts programmes [amongst many other ventures] at the iconic Chapel FM teamed up ten Leeds writers and ten of their Dortmund counterparts to … Read more

People often ask if I’m enjoying retirement.  It happened again last week.  I have to rally myself a little, because writing every day, running workshops for adults, working in schools and hosting literature festival events doesn’t actually feel like the retirement they might mean.  It mostly feels like fun, but not as if I have … Read more

I’ve been reading the wonderful Annie Lamott on writing, in her book ‘Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life’ [and now I’m reading pretty well everything else she has written].  What startles me is the quality of her observations.  How open and noticing her eyes and senses are.  How big her heart is, and … Read more

I am in a cave.  To one side of me a large, flat, white light shines on my face.  I am sitting in a Mastermind chair in front of a black background looking at a camera.  It looks large and rather technical for someone who uses his iPhone like a Brownie box-camera [remember those?]. My … Read more

At a bit of a loss in terms of what to write next is a luxury really after having had a new collection recently published.  But the sensitive poet, all sixteen stones or 100kg of him, will always have a reason to question himself, and wonder if that’s it.  End of poetry.  End of poet. … Read more

So here we are in New York.  Our hotel bedroom is above a busy highway, with the Hudson River ‘across the road’.  I am here for my seventieth birthday staying in the Jane Hotel which used to be a seamen’s mission and has now been transformed into a glorious retro retreat in West Village bordering … Read more

I have just spent a week in Cyprus working in the British army schools.  I did it last year and was so pleased to be asked back.  As ever the schools and young people I worked with were delightful.  Poetry filled my head throughout the week, the brilliant efforts of the youngsters and revisiting my … Read more

It’s a Saturday morning in North Bridlington Library.  I’m sitting with one of my fellow judges for the East Riding Poetry competition, Wendy Pratt, waiting for the winners and highly commended poets to turn up for the award giving event.  It seems that the room is empty one moment and then full of excited and … Read more

Every now and then the past can come back and surprise you.  Sometimes it’s a more subtle process, so that you seem to have no memory of something and THEN a little later on you do.  Let me explain; a few weeks before Christmas my two friends Bob and Sue contacted me separately to let … Read more