he Mullard Space Science Lab is crammed with all manner of space paraphernalia and technical equipment, and nitrogen tanks, and bits of rocket, as you might expect.
Read MoreSomeone left the space lab cake out in the rain...
So far, each time I've been to the Mullard Space Science Lab it has been pouring down with rain and there has been cake. Scientists, engineers, and PhD students are partial to tea and cake around 3 p.m. it seems.
Read MoreThe Color of Money: Grady Seasons
Scorsese's hugely underrated 'The Color of Money' is on BBC One right now. I'm reminded of when my friend Beril challenged me and Luke Heeley to write poems about the sleazy bit-part hustler Grady Seasons
Read MoreNew residency at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory
I have just begun a one-year stint as poet in residence at UCL's Surrey-based Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL for short). This is my first big new (ad)venture in a while and I'm tinglier than 'Space Dust Alka-Seltzer', if there were such a thing.
Read MoreHiroshima & Nagasaki & Tsutomu Yamaguchi
August 6th and August 9th: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was caught up in both horrific events.
Read MoreIt's Me, O Lord
...standing in the need of prayer. Well it felt that way in the warm-up room of Jacques Samuel Pianos on Edgware Road.
Read MoreByron's 'Darkness' and the Summer of No Sun
[Given the Sun's reluctance to appear this year, I thought it was a good time to revive a piece I wrote for Birkbeck College's splendid Writer's Hub. This article first appeared there in June 2012.]
Read MoreRemembering 'Simoraine'
Every Father's Day I think about funeral music, a theme that's played through my mind ever since October 1997, when I heard the pieces that my musician father, Clive Barraclough, had selected for his final 'appearance'.
Read MoreBest American Poetry Blog
This week (Monday to Friday), I'm a guest blogger over at the Best American Poetry website. I feel a little guilty, as I'm neglecting my own site, but I'm hoping to continue here from next week.
Read MoreNew blog
A few years ago I had a blog called 'Fallout'. We fell out. This is going to be the new blog. Life, literature, culture, my struggles playing the trumpet, which I took up last summer.