Geoffrey Heptonstall

Behind Every Word

The translators of the King James Bible, remarkable for its textual qualities, consciously chose a language that...

3. Reflecting on Glass

Aldous Huxley began his career writing for Vogue. Assigned to write about the trivial and the transient was, he said...

2. Marvellous Stones

There is an Old English poem, The Ruin, describing a city, generally believed to be Bath, as it was in the Dark Ages.

1. A Figure in the Distance

Words know their place. They seek a homeland. The location is never arbitrary.

3. Shadows and Light

‘Shadows are confused by sunlight,’ is the conclusion of The Conference of the Birds, Jean-Claude Carrière’s...

2. The Birds

Paul Muldoon’s image is striking. The poet looks out of the window at an everyday scene...

1. Outwood

‘Trees at night are like an army marching.’ So begins Nicholas Mosley’s novel Accident. Trees are not blocks of wood...

3. Out of Time

Curiosity, if not fate, invites us to find our way down. There, in the shadows of our thoughts, lies the feeling that...

2. Going Underground

When we go down into the heart of things what do we find? At first it is very dark. There are voices in the distance...

1. Following the Snail

L’Escargot by Henri Matisse is large and immediately apparent to any Tate Britain visitor...

The Time of My Life

Dying, I lose all sense of time...

The Awakening of Stone Statues

A songbird’s silent flight through the storm...

Sounds Unseen

The door closes on the day...

Cambridge

Whereof one cannot speak...

The Will To Change

The world is in a process of transformation whenever a poet’s fingers inscribe a word...

Each Delicacy And Shade

Places of learning attract poets, both as a source of income and as an environment sympathetic to literary activity...

Coming And Going

One poet often evokes consideration of another poet...

Sappho's Shadow

Literary fame is generally confined to a small circle of associates. Few writers emerge into public awareness.

The First Words: Three

The craft of writing is learned through the practice of writing.

The First Words: Two

Writers are the eyes of a society that is blind, the ears of a society that is deaf...

The First Words: One

A line of Robert Frost’s read long ago retains its appeal to me: ‘May something always go unharvested.’

The Writer Inside The Writer

It was an irresistible treat to read Virginia’s Woolf Genius and Ink.

A Collection

The Rites of Paradise, my first full collection of poetry, is in print.

When There Is Nothing

Like a time of war, the deadly virus spreads changing everything.

Homeward We Remember

Seconds in China