Poetry and Privacy

It looks like my critical book is coming out with Seren in July 2012. The full title is: Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. I'll probably tweak a few things between now and publication day, but the set of chapters, if not the exact sequence, is fairly certain: (a) Mahon (b) Maxwell (c) Heaney and Plath (d) Minhinnick (e) Groarke (f) Burnside (g) Jones and Graham

Selected Poems of James Liddy

I've been co-editing the Selected Poems of James Liddy for the past while. On my visit to Madison some weeks ago I was able to meet up with my co-editor, Tyler Farrell, with James's partner, Jim Chapson, and with Alan Hayes, the likely publisher of the book. It's possible that this volume, which will be a relatively selective Selected, may now appear sooner (i.e. this summer) rather than later.

Voyages Over Voices

Liverpool University Press has just brought out Voyages Over Voices, which is a collection of essays on Anne Stevenson, as edited by Angela Leighton. I've got an essay in the volume, which deals with how Stevenson's poems often seem to have 'second thoughts'.

Reading with Peter Finch

I've got a poetry reading coming up with Peter Finch on September 23rd.

Slanderous Tongues

The latest edition of New Welsh Review has just appeared in my mailbox. Inside, I've got a longish review of Slanderous Tongues, an essay collection about recent Welsh poetry which is edited by Daniel G. Williams. There are also some poems by Meirion Jordan (surely a bright prospect) and Tim Liardet reviews the latest book by Gwyneth Lewis.

Irish Championships

The Irish Chess Championship has just concluded in Dublin, and I finished in joint fifth place with 5.5/9 - my best performance since coming back to chess in 2006. My most memorable game was actually the one I lost to the eventual winner of the tournament, Alex Lopez from Cork. Apart from the debacle of misremembering the start-time for that game (which I could have forfeited - Alex sportingly agreed to play it out), it was a good event for me. Particularly with the black pieces where I scored 4/5, beating Mark Orr with the Leningrad Dutch and (somewhat fortuitously) winning a double rook endgame when two pawns down against Peter Cafolla.

Eyewear poem

A new poem of mine has gone up on Eyewear. It's one of a series of poems about my experiences as a porter in Oxford.