Below is the text of the eulogy delivered at my father’s funeral at Colney Woods Burial Ground, Norwich, on 8 February 2022. He contributed to this magazine regularly for decades, from its inception until 2012. That was the year in which Carcanet ceased to publish his books, which he took as an affront. His final collection, By the River Wensum, was published by Shoestring Press in 2014. He leaves behind a hurricane of difficulties that do not receive mention in the text below. Lazy comparisons between his poetry and mine often frustrate me, though I accept they are inevitable. And, much as I loved him, I hope nobody ever has cause to draw many non-poetic comparisons between us.

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This is the right place for my father’s funeral, though sadly he has never been here before today. His best friend, at least as far as my father was concerned – who was one of the kindest men I’ve ever met and a true father and husband – passed away last summer, and had a very moving, well-attended funeral right here. Sadly, despite my best efforts, my father was unable to attend it, for reasons some of you know about. But that evening on the phone, as my partner and I stopped in Kings Lynn on our way back home to Nottingham, he asked me to describe the funeral to him. My father had an excellent imagination, so I’d like to think he saw it anyway, in his mind’s eye.

My dad was ...