Long Poem Magazine

The poems included in LPM most recently (Issue Twenty Seven | Spring 2022 : from THE MESSENGER HOUSE – At Home 2020) are part of a much bigger project I … Continue reading »

I didn’t start writing poetry until I was in my late forties. I’d read poetry fairly deeply by then, I’d read my Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, but the idea of … Continue reading »

Shortly after I’d agreed to Linda and Claire’s invitation to write about my process, I realised how difficult it was going to be. When I read other poets’ accounts, I … Continue reading »

That remark of Keats’ about seeing the long poem as ‘the Polar star’ of poetry is always twinkling somewhere in my mind, however dense the lyric and epigrammatic cloud-cover.  I … Continue reading »

The moment when I sense a sequence of poems emerging is not dissimilar to the first sighting of the haar, the sea fog, as it rolls in on the north-east … Continue reading »

Working as I do with organic, open forms, length is always a consideration: an intrinsic part of how the poem works. For shorter poems ­ – and some of my … Continue reading »

About ‘Wild Swimming…’ “Nothing comes from nowhere” is a mantra that make increasing sense to me. My writing depends on memory, location, association. And writing, especially my poetry, sparks into … Continue reading »

I have little self-confidence when it comes to writing long pieces, and usually will only do so under extreme pressure, for example having to submit my PhD thesis in 2012. … Continue reading »

In 2010 Long Poem Magazine published my poem Panama Canal. The poem formed part of my sequence Graceline which Enitharmon brought out that same year. When I was 11 years … Continue reading »

I like to both write and read very brief poems where image and idea combine in an instantaneous cleansing of perception.  There is a vitality and resonance about working in … Continue reading »