Nige gives us Auden's poetic tribute to two great literary naturalists... Two books I had on the go a little while ago were Richard Mabey's biography of Gilbert White  and a selection from Thoreau's Journals. This latter is the Dover Thrift edition, which somehow winnows the 14 mighty volumes of published ... Read More...

Dabbler editor Gaw with a poem for 11/11/11... It's always the fellowship that seems most important to soldiers; ultimately, it's what persuades them to die. Doesn't that fit the definition of a tragedy? This poem by the late Mick Imlah describes the fate of the players of the London Scottish rugby club ... Read More...

Gaw looks for a bit of poetic consolation at what he finds to be a depressing time of year. There are two sorts of people: those who welcome the clocks going back as it heralds the opportunity to wear nice woolly jumpers, sit by fires in pubs, and look out the ... Read More...

Nige examines a 19th Century poem that has experienced a sudden revival in popularity, having been cited as an inspiration by both Nelson Mandela and, um, Gordon Brown... My father's taste in poetry was that of an upright Edwardian. He had a personal anthology of poems of moral uplift and patriotic ... Read More...

Continuing our Dabbler Verse series, Gaw recalls a horsey and hippyish poem from his youth. Coming back from the corner shop today I heard the leisurely clatter of hooves. It was the mounted police that regularly patrol our corner of London. I always get a thrill when I see them. They ... Read More...

I don't know what it was with me and Marianne Moore. For years I kept meaning to read her 'properly'. I knew her from such gems as Poetry (who could resist that opening line?) and a few others, but I'd never looked further. I was daunted by the Collected Poems, ... Read More...

As regular readers might know, I've written a novel. I took its title from a Hardy poem, Midnight on the Great Western (you can buy Region of Sin for Kindle here). This has been one of my favourite poems since I first read it as a teenager, more than likely whilst, and ... Read More...

Here's a nice piece by Joe Moran on mowing lawns. Not that anyone's been able to do much mowing recently - I'd probably have to have resort to a machete to get near our patch of grass, subsumed as it is by sub-tropical undergrowth. Good growing weather, see. Anyhow, Mr Moran thinks ... Read More...

The unsettled weather of the last few days - the British weatherman's 'sunny spells' interspersed with the same's 'thundery showers' - brings to mind a poem by Louis MacNeice, June Thunder. It was published in 1938, and it's difficult to read it now without thinking of it as pre-war, a foreshadowing ... Read More...

In a new occasional series, Dabblers select those poems that manage to hit a very particular spot, and do it better than anything else. First, Gaw gets carried away by a bit of seasonal sunshine. I find the warm days of early summer can sometimes impart a tremendous feeling of well-being: ... Read More...