Poetry Education Research

I wrote here a couple of days ago about my aversion to using war metaphor to describe cancer. Judging from the number of comments, retweets and blog stats this is an issue that clearly resonates with a lot of people, both those who have/have had cancer and those who have not. Thank you to all of you who have retweeted my post and got in touch via Twitter. I  like a discursive argument as much…

The Next Big Thing I have been been tagged by poet and blogger Abegail Morley to answer set questions relating to my memoir of cancer, Love for Now. I have tagged two poets to continue the series, whose details are at the foot of this post.   Where did the idea of the book come from? Love for Now did not begin with an idea but an illness. As I have written elsewhere, there wasn’t a plan. I…

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I had spent the previous year copying by hand into a notebook. This is a personal anthology of arbitrary tastes and rules: to include a poem I had to be able to remember where I was when I first read or heard it; and I only allowed myself one poem per poet (yes, I know, William Blake…

I began writing the Lifesaving Poems series of blog posts in May 2010. The idea was to celebrate the poems that I had spent the previous year copying by hand into a notebook. This is a personal anthology of arbitrary tastes and rules: to include a poem I had to be able to remember where I was when I first read or heard it; and I only allowed myself one poem per poet. You can read ten most…

To all who knew him, it was a tragedy,one year ago, to lose the life-force that was Jörn Cann. I knew him as my ward doctor overseeing day case patients in the Haematology unit where I was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006. As I have said before, he was foul-mouthed and objectionable, caring and compassionate. An avid rock-collector and Arsenal fan, he was a self-confessed geek who…

There wasn’t a plan. On January 1, 2006 I woke up with a sharp pain on my right side. I thought I had slept in a draft. You can imagine the levels of sympathy I received  as I shuffled around the house feeling sorry for myself. Of course we had celebrated. But I had actually behaved. By that evening we were in A&E, asking for anything, anything at all to take the pain away. The doctors…

If you have a friend who is diagnosed with cancer, the best thing to do in terms of what to say (or not say) is take your lead from them. Do use the word cancer. Do not assure them you know they will make it. And certainly do not say it is not fair. I would also try to resist the temptation to say ‘If there’s anything I can do…’ as that puts the onus onto them to come up with a solution to a…

I was formally diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, on Valentine’s Day, 2006. I was 42. I was told that my treatment had been successful, six months later, in October that year. I have now been in remission from the disease for just over six years. I am now required to visit the hospital where I was treated just once a year for check-ups. The diagnosis, when…

When I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma nearly seven years ago the aspect of telling people I dreaded most was their reaction to my sad news. I quickly became expert at managing their upset and disappointment. This is not statistical, but here are the comments which were made to me most often, and my (usually unspoken) reaction to them, in no particular order: 1. ‘Well, if anyone can…

  Seven years ago today, the date in the photograph above was the day I knew had cancer. By this stage of the year in 2006 I had been hospitalised twice. I’d had an ultrasound and CT scan, and a biopsy of my tumour under X-ray conditions. My formal diagnosis was still days away, but I knew from everything the doctors had told me (and not told me) that the news, when it came, would be grave. I…

Elegy for Jane(My student, thrown by a horse)I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;And how, once started into talk, the light syllables leaped for her.And she balanced in the delight of her thought,A wren, happy, tail into the wind,Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.The shade sang with her;The leaves, their whispers turned…

Yesterday was a good day and a sad say. A good day because Smiths Knoll, the poetry magazine edited by Joanna Cutts and Michael Laskey, arrived on my doormat. A sad day because, after twenty-one years, yesterday’s issue, number 50, will be its last. (It is a cracker by the way, full to bursting with energy and life.) I had seen the notice on the Smiths Knoll website warning that this day would…

  If there is one difference I hope to make with Love for Now book it is to challenge the overwhelming use of war metaphor (‘Today saw the passing of X, after a short/long battle with cancer…’) to describe cancer. This is inadequate for three reasons. Firstly, let me assure you, after a day on a chemotherapy drip you feel the battle is being done to you, not that you are choosing to fight in…

I have said before that one of the most useful things I have done in my life was to be a member of a group of poets who would meet to workshop each other’s poems, between 2003-05. Every five weeks or so the poets in the group would meet in my kitchen over coffee and Danish to discuss poems which we were drafting. Each poet would read out their poem and then listen, in silence, while the rest of…

Norman MacCaig’s ‘Aunt Julia’ was the first poem I remember reading which made me think ‘I need to do this’.  I was about fourteen at the time. I’d been excited by Ted Hughes’ early animal poems, Roger McGough’s ’40 Love’, and John Logan’s marvellous ‘The Picnic’ (in Michael and Peter Benton’s Touchstones 5 —now out of print). The difference with ‘Aunt Julia’ was that I came upon it in the first…