Matthew Paul

As I’ve noted previously, in the last stage of my second Poetry Business Writing School I was grouped together with James (Jim) Caruth and Philip Rush, very fine poets both. One of the tasks which Ann and Peter Sansom set us (and the other groups) was to rank five poems and write about why we… Continue reading Beer o’clock →

I was interested to read Jonathan Jones’s Guardian review of the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition at the National Gallery. It’s an important show, which rightly seeks to claim Gentileschi’s ‘greatness’, as Jones calls it, as a woman artist among the traditional pantheon of almost exclusively male painters. The physicality of her painting of ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’… Continue reading Judith →

So here we are again, in what is marginally my favourite season. I thought I’d post some of my autumn haiku to mark it. climbing the wallsof a disused youth club:                   flowering hops*avocet billsscour the lagoon bed—hurricane’s end*autumn winda delivery of flourto the bakery *tucking a roll-upbehind his earthe harvest sun *shifting currents . . .a… Continue reading Some autumn haiku →

I was sad to hear of the death, on Thursday, of Derek Mahon, some of whose collections, most notably The Hunt By Night (OUP, 1982) and An Autumn Wind (Gallery Press, 2010) are among my very favourites. He was a supremely elegant poet. I had the bad luck to have missed his spell as writer-in-residence… Continue reading Derek Mahon →

Here in the UK it’s National Poetry Day. It isn’t really my cup of tea, but if it gets more people buying and reading good poetry then what’s not to like? In that vein, since every other poet is doing so today, I thought I’d do a flagrant piece of self-promotion by saying that it’s… Continue reading National Poetry Day →

Yesterday was my 54th birthday. With Covid restrictions in place, it was inevitably a rather quiet one; not that I would have lasted till the 10 o’clock pub curfew anyway. I was chuffed to receive a copy of the lovely-looking 14 Magazine, edited by Richard Skinner, in which I have a poem called ‘The Bidding’.… Continue reading September stuff →

Six months on from the start of Lockdown in England, I’ve been reflecting on the good things which I’ve experienced during that period. Here is a list, in no particular order.The heightened awareness of mortality caused by the scandalously high Covid death rates in the UK, USA and other countries run by right-wing fools has… Continue reading The last six months →

I’m writing this from my old friend Michael’s flat in St Leonard’s, which is by far the furthest I’ve been since before Lockdown. It’s lovely to be able to see (and hear) the Channel, though that view isn’t always so rosy: Michael says you can sometimes see boats full of migrants drifting towards the shore… Continue reading Channelling →

Over on the Snapshot Press website, two new free e-books are available: a chapbook of haiku by Debbie Strange and one of tanka by George Swede. Respectively, they are Canada’s finest haiku and tanka poets, so it’s fitting that they have been published simultaneously. Both are brilliant books and highly recommended. In these weird times,… Continue reading New e-books from Snapshot Press →

Yesterday I took a train or two to Dorking, one of several lovely Surrey towns which have a Georgian heart (though no doubt the prosperity which enabled that loveliness derived, at least in part, from the profits of slavery). Outside Dorking Halls, AKA ‘Mole Valley’s top entertainment venue’, as the local council boasts, and which… Continue reading On Vaughan Williams and John Greening →