"We live in a time when productivity is everything - to produce a lot, to have a lot, to write a lot. But in poetry, it's not what you want, but what Poetry wants, what Poetry gives you. I can neither force it nor demand it to appear. Poetry has taught me to be patient."

Gloria Gervitz (tr. Mark Schafer)

Current reading:

'Migrations', the long, modernist poem by Mexican poet, Gloria Gervitz. Encompassing Mexican life, Jewish identity and the immigrant experience. And of course, it's by a woman, and the central relationships in the poem are mother/daughter/grandmother - a feminine presence, sometimes a real woman, sometimes an oracle or female deity, haunts the poem. The wide-format book gives it the space it deserves, and some pages with a few lines, even a single line, give it an impressive visual impact.

Selected poems of Joanne Kyger, seminal American West Coast poet, who seems to have influenced a lot of people, from the Beats to the New Yorkers, with her Buddhist poetry of immediate experience. The notebook is the typical vehicle here for conveying moment-to-moment perception with quietness and gentle humour.

Next week I'm on a business trip to the Nissan car plant at Sunderland, and a week today we're off on a family holiday to Devon and Cornwall. Currently trying to plan a route that avoids flooded areas, taking plenty of books to read and games to play, as there seems no end in sight to the rainy weather.