Polly, age 8
I was lucky enough to be introduced to poetry as a child both at home and at school. Where I got the idea that I could grow up to be a ‘poetess’ is another matter. There was, however, a good deal of practicing in hard-back notebooks before my poem ‘Eyes’ was included in an anthology of Nottinghamshire students’ work, in 1995. Perhaps this was too much encouragement. 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 can be heard on the Wordsworth Trust website.