I’ve been thinking about poetry networks. I know that’s a word which carries all sorts of negative associations, but I don’t know what else to use in its place. Poetry has always relied on contacts and correspondence, but that of course is much quicker now thanks to email and the internet. Recently, I spent a great couple of hours talking to and drinking coffee with a publisher I have ‘known’ online for many years: it was great to finally meet, and one of the things we talked about was how both geographical and online clusters of poets exist; also, how unlikely some of those clusters and contacts are.

Later the same day, the postman delivered a copy of John Levy’s new book, sent and inscribed by the author. I was trying to think about how John and I knew each other, whether it was from one of my visits to…