I've got a number of copies of A Sky Full Of Birds at home, for anyone who'd like to buy one direct from me – they're £13 including P&P, and I can sign them or add dedication… Read More

It's always good to read or hear Tomas Transtromer's poetry, and last Sunday's concluding episode of Wallander featured a recitation of his The Half-finished Heaven.It sent me back to his Co… Read More

It's been 28 years since I last saw Springsteen live. I'm a fan, although I've not been that keen on some of his more recent albums, and far too often I've seen that he's touring and thought… Read More

My poem, Two Orthodox Left-Armers, is included in this splendid chapbook anthology from Candlestick Press. Edited by John Lucas, whose own poem Still Going Strong is one of the highlights of… Read More

This rather intriguing book (the above are the front and back covers, not two different volumes), arrived yesterday from Faber and Faber. It's a dual-authored poetry collection by American t… Read More

Here's the latest review of A Sky Full Of Birds, in the NFU's Countryside magazine. You can find out more about it, and how to buy it, if you're interested, here Read More

Taking a break from birds for a moment, these furry critters were everywhere along the clifftops in Alderney a couple of weeks back. They're the caterpillars of the Glanville Fritillary, a v… Read More

Another brief bulletin from Normandy – when we were there a couple of weeks back, there were good numbers of Sanderlings, Turnstones and Whimbrels passing through on the way to their n… Read More

Well, not exactly. The above bird is a Kentish Plover, which despite its name is nowhere to be found in the garden of England. On the beaches of the Cotentin Peninsula, though, they're prese… Read More

I've got a few readings from A Sky Full Of Birds coming up over the next few months. You'll probably get heartily sick of me plugging them as time goes on, but here's the programme as it sta… Read More

A customer has posted this lovely review of A Sky Full Of Birds on Amazon – you can of course by the book there in print or electronic editions Read More

Wheatears are among my favourite British birds, but until my visit to Alderney, I'd seen relatively few this spring. I'm not sure if that's because passage has been slow because of the cool… Read More

 Alderney isn't just about Gannets and other birds. In the spring, it's just a very pleasant place to be, walking along the cliffs or beaches. The spot above, on the south coast of the… Read More

Last week, I was co-leading a Bird Watching Magazine/Avian Adventures readers' holiday to Alderney and Normandy, with Martin Batt, whose work with the Living Islands project on Alderney… Read More

One for you birders out there - what species is this chap?I photographed it during a recent trip to Alderney, where a new bird observatory and ringing station has been set up. Among the rema… Read More

I owe my interest in football, and my love of it, to my dad. He was a cultured midfielder of no mean ability himself, in his youth, and I can't remember a time when I didn't want to either k… Read More

A Sky Full Of Birds was reviewed in the Daily Mail today – shame that the sub-editor made the old birdwatcher=twitcher assumption, but a really nice review all the same Read More

Over at Rogue Strands, Matthew Stewart has posted about Phil Brown's excellent Huffington Post feature on Hugo Williams, a poet whose work I've always enjoyed.It rang quite a few bells with… Read More

This review of A Sky Full Of Birds appeared on the Fatbirder website earlier today – many thanks to Bo Beolens for his kind words about it, and for reviewing it so soon after release… Read More

April is when the arrival of summer migrants to these islands really gets into full swing, making it (and May) probably the two best birding months of the year. You know what's coming, prett… Read More

I've got a confession to make. I don't like Prefab Sprout. An awful lot of poets do, it seems, but I was never a fan. The only song of theirs that I do always enjoy hearing is Cars and Girls… Read More

So, the big day is here. A Sky Full Of Birds is out today, from Rider Books, in hardback and as an e-book. You can find out much more about it here.Writing it and then working with the edito… Read More

Over at his blog Rogue Strands, Matthew Stewart has very kindly linked to my recent interview in the Daily Telegraph, before talking about how it throws new light on some of the poems in my… Read More

Poet Alison Brackenbury talks about her new collection, Skies, about 20 minutes into the programme, and reads from the book - great to hear poetry being given this sort of exposure, and love… Read More

Great to hear that David Morley has won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for his selected poems, The Invisible Gift. I like the fact that the judges talked about something "theatr… Read More

I'm interviewed in the Daily Telegraph today about my book, A Sky Full Of Birds, which is out a week today, and about how birdwatching helped me cope with depression following the death of m… Read More

Edition six of Prac Crit is online now, with Karen Solie Stephan Burt and Luke Kennard the featured poets. Solie's a poet who's work I absolutely love, and Kennard isn't far behind, either… Read More

This rather splendid book arrived in the post yesterday – Alison Brackenbury's latest collection, Skies, from Carcanet. You can read a lot more about it here, but suffice it to say tha… Read More

The inaugural issue of The High Window, a new quarterly literary journal, has been published, and you can find it here.Poets with work in the first issue include Ian Duhig, AF Harrold, Roy M… Read More

To mark St David's Day, Wales has got a new national poet – Ifor ap Glyn. You can read more about it here.And (you knew this was coming, didn't you?), I'm going to mark the day by read… Read More

Britain might not have anything like the longest bird list in the world – in the last couple of weeks, in fact, we've finally had the 600th species added to it, Yelkouan Shearwater, se… Read More

Details here on how to make nominations for this year's Forward Prizes for Poetry. Significantly, this is the first time that there's been an opportunity to nominate work from online journal… Read More

Excellent review of an excellent collection – Stephen Payne's Pattern beyond chance (HappenStance) – by Matthew Stewart at his blog, Rogue Strands. As he says, it's pretty r… Read More

And following on from yesterday's post, an excellent piece here on RF Langley. Hard to argue with any of it, really - I've been enjoying the Complete Poems hugely, and dip in and out of the… Read More

Very different, but both well worth seeking out.  Read More

I generally avoid knocking the BBC too much, but this really is a piss-poor excuse for journalism. The heavy-handed attempts at humour are bad enough, but the whole premise is even worse &nd&hell…Read More

Just a handful of tickets left for this, I think – a chance to hear Dan read from his new collection the terrible, plus Angela France and David Clarke. I can recommend the book very hi… Read More

This is what I've spent a large part of my writing time on for the last two years – a 'birding memoir', in which I talk about trying to see Britain's greatest avian spectacles, and how… Read More

Very interesting blog piece from Charles Boyle here, on the current debate about literary festivals paying (and not paying) writers. It is, of course, a very complicated subject. I'd guess m… Read More

I've been very poor at updating things around here just lately, but for now it's worth highlighting this event, on Monday night - as always, it's worth making the effort to get along to. Ope… Read More

Birmingham-based Haunted House Theatre will be touring the Midlands with a new verse play about free schools.Free for All,written in iambic pentameter, is a play by University of Birmingham… Read More

Nice end-of-year list here from the Poetry School, featuring Map: Poems After William Smith's Geological Map of 1815, edited by Michael McKimm and published by Worple Press. Admittedly, I do… Read More

Interesting essay here on Rudyard Kipling's If, voted the nation's favourite poem back in 1995, and no doubt still popular today.I'm no great fan of it, for some of the reasons listed in the… Read More

This has been my recent reading. I don't know Langley's poetry that well, although I've enjoyed what I have read, but you really don't have to know it to get an awful lot out of this terrifi… Read More

Someone posted a link to this poem on Facebook earlier – I thought I'd share it here. I don't know enough of Gilbert's work. I must read more Read More

It provided a year's worth of poetry writing prompts, hints and tips, and now you can get it in book form.52 was a project that ran throughout 2014, and the new volume from Nine Arches Press… Read More

The Nightwatchman, the cricket quarterly of a decidedly literary bent, will be posting some of the best pieces from its first three years here.There's also a Select XI of essays from issues… Read More

On Monday night, I was at the last Nine Arches Press/Crystal Clear Creators Shindig of the year, at The Western in Leicester.As usual, the open mic readers were both varied and of high quali… Read More

Over at London Grip Poetry Review, there's a review by Martin Noutch of Map - Poems After William Smith's Geological Map of 1815, edited by Michael McKimm and available from Worple Press.He… Read More

Daniel Sluman, Cora Greenhill and Stephen Payne are the featured readers at the latest Shindig, hosted by Nine Arches Press, Crystal Clear Creators and the Centre for New Writing, at The Wes… Read More

Thanks are due to Matthew Stewart for choosing to feature a poem of mine - Comeback - on his blog Rogue Strands. It's from my first chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light, which came out jus… Read More

A couple of weeks ago I came across this feature online, and only got round to reading it yesterday. All very intriguing, but I'm such a layman, scientifically, that I really need someone to… Read More

I've been writing a poem that takes as its inspiration, or at least its point of departure, an album by a favourite songwriter of mine. He's not exactly a household name worldwide, but he's… Read More

Really rather good take on the whole poetry plagiarism issue by Channel 4 News here – Ira Lightman comes across really well, I think Read More

Come on, writerly types, you can admit it to me. While 'working from home', 'waiting for inspiration', or 'doing research', you've watched a ridiculous number of episodes of Murder She Wrote… Read More

I read this in The Guardian earlier, although I haven't seen the documentary that it talks about. I used to get sleep paralysis on a regular basis, and it could be terrifying at times, altho… Read More

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I have a lot of doubts about 'prize culture' in poetry generally, but in recent years, the Forward Prize shortlists have become a great deal more diverse, and they deserve a lot of credit fo… Read More

There's a special one-off event celebrating new poetry with Nine Arches Press and the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester, on Monday, 5th October, 2015.It takes… Read More

I recently signed up to become an Eyewear micro-patron - for £10, you get two of the press's titles, 40% off other titles, and exclusive news and invites. I was keen to buy Andrew Shie… Read More

Terrific blogpost here by Richard Skinner, on how he came to appreciate the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, and also about the joy of discovering a much-sought volume in a secondhand bookshop. Hay… Read More

Good blogpost here on why Jeremy Corbyn should be applauded for not singing the national anthem - he'd have been a hypocrite to do so, he showed all the respect appropriate to the occasion a… Read More

It probably wasn't a huge surprise to many that Jonathan Bate's biography of Ted Hughes - originally being written with the co-operation of the poet's estate - has now effectively been 'outl… Read More

I was over around Helpston yesterday, as part of an ongoing project with photographer Phil Harris. We're not trying to trace John Clare's footsteps or anything like that, just to use some of… Read More

We saw this Narrow-billed Woodcreeper in the Mburucuya National Park, northern Argentina. It's a family of birds I'd never come across before - they're not unlike our own Treecreeper, but ra… Read More

Delighted to be reading alongside Carrie Etter and Alasdair Paterson on April 11th - more on this soon Read More