In The Poetry

‘Villanelle for the Middle of the Way’. This poem was written in the strict form where you have two rhyming lines and a third between them, which are repeated all the way through the poem with other rhymes added to them and in attempting to write a villanelle, I always thought of T S Eliot [...]

‘Snakeshead Fritillaries’. These are waterside plants that grow beside the Thames in Oxford, and very famously in the gardens of Magdalene College, and Geoffrey Grigson – I remember reading about them before I was aware of the flowers – saying that everyone should walk once in a fritillary field before he died, and that [...]

This poem, ‘Expectans Expectavi’, which is the title of a psalm, “I waited patiently for the Lord”, is about waiting, written at the end of the last war when the whole world, really, seemed to be holding its breath for the return of ordinary life, and all the soldiers from overseas, and I thought of [...]

Choosing a Name

My little son, I have cast you out
To hang heels upward, wailing over a world
With walls too wide.
My faith till now, and now my love:
No walls too wide for that to fill, no depth
Too great for all you hide.

I love, not knowing what I love,
[...]