sean o’brien – Tom Chivers

A Poem for Barry

A poem for Barry MacSweeney, in time for Sunday’s BBC Radio 4 documentary (4.30pm). This is from my collection How To Build A City and was written, I think, in 2003. On Kinder Scout All the skies are leased anyway – Barry MacSweeney, Pearl We marvel how the peat bog got this highContinue reading “A Poem for Barry”

Canon law

Sean O’Brien defends the canon in yesterday’s Guardian. I don’t quite know what to make of it. On the one hand his call to read serious poetry is right; and I agree that it’s important to see oneself as ‘part of a continuum, a community extending across history’. On the other hand, I can’t help but thinkContinue reading “Canon law”