At first glance, the Finnish town of Sysmä in early April might seem to have little to attract the casual visitor. A large billboard on the way into the centre on the three-hour bus ride from Helsinki proudly boasts of the country's only Accordion Museum, but in Finland April is...

I'm standing in the rain in a French public square, protected only by a thin plastic hood. On a stage before me, a man who looks like a ginger Alan Davies fallen on hard times is repeating the phrase 'Très grand gel' (which might translate as 'Heavy frost'), while next...

What I want to talk about today is hard. Not because it's difficult or forbidding, although it might well be both those things, but because it's the erect penis of a Victorian man. The long-dead schlong can be found illustrating two of my poems recently published by the...

Round the back of London's South Bank, something important is hidden away. It's within easy walk of a currently rammed Olympic transport hub, but unlike London Bridge, there's no one in a purple and orange overall to offer helpful and insistent directions. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking there'd...

Not for the first time, I have been tempted to compare myself negatively to Lord Byron. Like a large proportion of the young men of his time and class, the Romantic lothario spent the years 1809 to 1811 on a Grand Tour of Europe, absorbing the cultural, artistic and military...

There's a world out there I never knew existed. A world in which Swedish slam poets are talking about fish fingers and breathy Nicaraguan women are writing about rolling apples on their genitals, while Finnish folk-singers accompany them to the sound of an authentic medieval lute.

These are just...

Five and a half years ago, I received a phone call in my grandmother's kitchen informing me that I was one of 15 winners of the 2006 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. She was unclear about what was happening, and to some extent still is. I was better...