As writers I think it's fairly common for us to revisit our own work from time to time, reading what we've read in the past and feeling either elation ("Hey, this isn't half bad!") or despair ("I can't believe I ever thought this was good.") or some odd…

I have too many books. In an age when many people don't own any books at all, as far as I can tell, I have more books than anyone I know--more than any of my friends and fellow students, more than any of the professors whose homes I have visited. I'm…

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot bear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world... William Butler Yeats' post-war poem, The Second Coming, has attracted a great deal of attention…

1. Once I stopped being a teenager, I had very little interaction with teenagers for about seven years, until I got a job making beds at a hippie island retreat in the Pacific. We worked in pairs and most of my co-workers were 17. I was amazed by how…

"Listen: there was a goat's head hanging by ropes in a tree. All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing The song of the night bird½" - from Brigit Kelly's "Song" I think if we took…

I arrived in Houston on the night of the fourth of July, after driving for four days - my partner, our sixteen-year-old dog, two cats, and I wedged into the car with suitcases and potted plants - from Massachusetts, where I'd lived for twelve years. I…

When I moved from Western Australia to Houston I brought only two books with me: the novel Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, and a photography book, Silence, by Brad Rimmer. Choosing these books to fit within my very limited luggage weight was difficult, but…

The best writing articulates the indescribable and names the unnamable. Precision and clarity are important, but it's something that transcends their boundaries in a text that makes it work. Last week in the workshop we discussed this in class, and, tending…

I write to you this Halloween dressed as Margot Tenenbaum, excited to share a poem that never graces the "Best Scary Poems" lists so dear to poetry blogs around this time of year. The poem is "The Witch of Coos" by Robert Frost, and can be read in full…

It's true. I watch Glee. I know it's a show that is sometimes maudlin and cliché. I don't mind this. On Tuesdays, when I get home after teaching/workshopping/worrying about how well I'm doing at life, I like sitting in front of my TV's shiny gleam and…