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R S Thomas (1913-2000) is a favourite poet of mine.  An Anglican priest, he is thought by some to be the great religious poet of the 20th century writing in English. I’m not religious, but I connect easily with the spirituality in his poems. He is that classic figure, the tortured priest hovering on the…

Yesterday as I walked past Winchester Cathedral I saw people dressed to the nines for a wedding. They, particularly the woman, looked awful, uncomfortable, conspicuous, and doleful. Robert Herrick (1591-1674) bemoans a person being “too precise in every part” and prefers a “sweet disorder in the dress.” I entirely agree, perhaps because I am myself…

Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) was a poet acclaimed around the world who seems to have passed out of fashion. She wrote clear, short-lined poems like those below but also more complex mystical poems strongly influenced by nature and the poets Blake, Shelley, and Yeats, whom she admired and studied. She has strong links with Northumberland and…

Everybody loves donkeys. Most of us are donkeys “led by lions.” I’m certainly a donkey, and probably you are. This poem is cheering and funny and promotes the supreme virtue of humility. We have far too many grandiose narcissists—think Donald Trump and Boris Johnson—wrecking our planet. I read this poem for the first time yesterday…

This is one of my very favourite poems. I have loved it for years, but it is a poem for the aged, of whom I am one. I love the lines: “To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths/Of all the western stars, until I die.” And what a Victorian last line: “To strive, to…

I’ve long had the idea that I might create my anthology of poems. Now I’m making it happen. Many of us must have a collection of poems we love, a collection that might say more about us than almost anything else—our writings, pictures, friends and family, crimes, and misdemeanours. A collection of poems reflects our…

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