The Poet Above the Bakery

For thirty years, Daniel Frost has lived in the same small flat above a bakery in Bristol. He has published nine books of poetry, and he has won prizes that most poets only dream about. Yet if you meet him at the corner shop, you would never guess.

Frost did not always write poems. As a young man, he worked on the docks, loading ships in the cold. “I learned more about poetry from the men on those docks than from any book,” he likes to say. The rhythm of their speech, he claims, taught him the rhythm of his lines.

His poems are not difficult. They are about ordinary things — a kettle, a bus ticket, the rain on a window — and this is exactly why readers love them. A poem that anyone can understand, but that no one else could have written, is the kind of poetry he believes in.

These days, Frost rarely gives interviews. He prefers to walk by the river and watch the boats. When I asked him what poetry is for, he thought for a long moment. “To make people slow down,” he said. “That's all. That's everything.”