Welcome to my website, where you can read about my publications to date, my interests and experiences, my hopes for the future and my ideas. I use the blog to post poetry reviews and short essays on individual poems and  collections. There is also a contacts page where you can email me to arrange a reading or to buy one of my books, or (next year) to arrange a poetry writing workshop.

I’ve spent most of my working life as an English teacher at the Manchester Grammar School. Teaching has been a wonderfully stimulating and rewarding way of life, despite the inhibiting pressure of exams, and I hope to continue with it in a freelance way. At the same time I look forward to focusing more fully on my own writing, and to developing workshop ideas, reading more widely and writing reviews.

Forthcoming Events:

From Oct 2011 to April 2012
Ian Pople and I will be leading discussion groups in the Central Library on Deansgate on the following texts:
8 Oct   Rilke, New Poems translated by Stephen Mitchell (Edmund)
12 Nov Elizabeth Bishop, Collected Poems (Ian)
10 Dec  WB Yeats (Edmund) (I can give details if you email me through
the contact page on this the site)
7 Jan   Gwyneth Lewis, A Hospital Odyssey (Ian)
11 Feb   Alice Oswald, Dart (Edmund)
10 Mar  Chris Woods, Dangerous Driving (Ian)
14 Apr  Linda France, You are her (Edmund)
Participation in the discussions is free but participants will have to supply their own copies of the texts and are expected to have read the poems in advance.
I plan to add a session on Jo Shapcott’s Her Book in the spring.