Homecomings

On the day after the year's darkest day, my father will finally come home. It's been over ten months since he left for a kidney biopsy, perhaps ten months to the day that the infection that entered through an uncaught bedsore paralysed him to the extent that he couldn't breathe. I'm sitting at the ancient computer he used to spend hours a day on, mostly reading weather reports, and wondering whether it'll ever be that way again.

Last night my mother and I cleaned "the playroom" to make space for extra furniture, moved down from the living room to make space for Dad's hospital bed and equipment. Fortunately, because the living room is fairly long, the entertainment centre can stay, as well as two small sofas. This means that the room will feel more homey, will look closer to the living room Dad left than a hospital room.

Saturday's dinner will be chicken quesadillas--of the dishes I make when home (i.e. it's suitable for spontaneous mass production), it's one of Dad's favourites.

2008 Readings

Here are the readings I have scheduled so far.

Saturday, 23 February, 7 p.m., Crockett & Powell Books, London (near Waterloo). I read with Wendy Mulford. This will also be the launch for my new pamphlet, Yet (Leafe Books).

Tuesday, 3 June, Swedenborg Hall, London (near Holborn). This is a launch for All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, edited by Lisa Russ Spaar and published by the University of Virginia Press. Along with other contributors, I'll read my poem in the collection as well as one other from the volume.

Tuesday, 22 July, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. I'll be reading with one other poet on the Series A reading series coordinated by William Allegrezza.

Six times lucky

I couldn't quite believe it when this afternoon I read the contents page for Friday's TLS and saw that they were publishing another poem of mine, the sixth they've printed this year alone. "Fear of Lightning" is also one of the most overtly (read "in your face") topical poems I've published (in short, it's on European secularism); I wrote it earlier this year, during and after my visit to the Czech Republic.

"School poetry teaching too limited"

So Ofsted, the UK's education inspector, says, and once you read this article in The Guardian, you'll see why.