I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me.
For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister
I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.
I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.
I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.
I was always influenced by language.
My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.
Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.
When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.
Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.
The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.
