Because, I suppose, Practical Criticism, or intensely focused close reading, was always my favourite thing about studying English as an undergraduate - a pleasure that continues now I've come to teach it.
Because I often don't discover - in a truly engaged way, that is - what I make of a poem until I've written something about it.
Because I've always enjoyed exercises like Carol Rumens' Poem of the Week for The Guardian, or Ruth Padel's 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, which first appeared weekly in The Independent; if only I could emulate their stamina...
Because I wondered what would happen if I tried to bring the two compartments of my brain, poet and critic, together. (That ghost of an oxymoron: practical criticism.)
Because contemporary poems need to be read.
