Polly, age 8
Where I got the idea that I could grow up to be a ‘poetess’ is a mystery, but I certainly thought it worth working at. A good deal of practicing in hard-back notebooks later, my poem ‘Eyes’ was included in an anthology of Nottinghamshire students’ work. Between ‘97 and ‘99 I self-published three ‘collections’ with the help of a photocopier, selling them out of a basket at school fetes. I also started taking my poems out in public, at events organised by The Nottingham Poetry Society.
In ‘99 I moved to East London to study English at Queen Mary College. Disappointed there was no Creative Writing Society, some friends and I set one up. In May 2002 we published Read Me – a collection of students’ poems – distributing them round college in an attempt to balance out the student newspaper’s refusal to include poetry. In June 2002 I won Queen Mary’s Sarah James Poetry Prize, for the sonnet ‘The Most Dangerous of All’.
In February 2003 I walked into The Poetry Café and into the world of performance poetry. High points in this era included Walking the Dog’s Halloween Special 2003, Poetry Unplugged’s 2003 Christmas Cracker @ Rada, open mic performances at StAnza 2004, and multiple slots at Speakeasy and Shortfuse. In May 2004 I was placed third in The Strokestown International Poetry Competition, meaning a trip to County Roscommon to read at the festival. In 2005 I began the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, during which I revisited the Sarah James Poetry Competition as a judge.
In 2006 I left London and headed north-west to start a PhD at Lancaster University, in collaboration with The Wordsworth Trust, and funded under the AHRC’s Landscape and Environment scheme. A soundclip from the launch of my pamphlet bone song, published in June 2008, can be heard on the Wordsworth Trust website.
In June 2009 bone song was shortlisted for the inaugural Michael Marks Pamphlet Prize.
Readings available to listen to on the BL website