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I was born in Cheshire and brought up in Lancashire – apart
from a two-year stint in Brussels, Belgium – until I left home
to study Economics at Cardiff University in Wales. I have no idea
why I chose to study Economics, a subject in which I have little interest
and no ability, and after a year I realized that I wanted to be a
writer. I decided to switch to a degree in English. This necessitated
going to night school to do an ‘A’ level, encouraged along
the way by the poet and academic John Freeman.
After gaining my ‘A’ level at night school I started an
English Literature degree at Birmingham University, and the main thing
on my mind from start to finish was to become as accomplished as possible
in writing poetry and prose. I was lucky to be encouraged by the poet
Steve Ellis, then a senior lecturer at the university, who kept an
eye on my progress. By the time I graduated from Birmingham, I’d
started to write poems in the voice I still have today, though it
would be more than fifteen years before I had a collection published.
The day after my finals finished, I sat down to write my first novel,
and completed the first draft in six weeks – this seems incredible
to me now, when I spend six months researching and planning before
even contemplating the writing of a draft. After I’d revised
the book I sent it to an agent – who took it on, but failed
to sell it. That book found three literary agents over the years,
but none succeeded in selling it. I carried on writing novels and
poetry through various periods of work and no-work – I owe thanks
to my parents who often bailed me out at different times. Failing
to get published, I became a lexicographer and editor.
I became obsessed with writing sonnets – an obsession that I
suspect I’ll have until I die – and I still feel that
the best sonnets of Robert Frost and E.A. Robinson are the finest
modern poems I have ever read. And I wrote six novels. I landed a
lot of agents and had many near-misses with publication. Finally,
when I was 40 and had started to fear that I was never going to achieve
publication, I was taken on by Alma Books, who encouraged me to develop
my ideas for the novel White Man Falling. After publication
of the book in 2006, it was a great pleasure to me and the publisher
that we won the Goss First Novel Award. Alma Books have also published
my collection of sonnets, Folly, under their Herla imprint.
I doubt there’ll be another collection from me for at least
ten years – poems come slowly, and the really good ones are
few and far between.
After Birmingham I moved to London, and after London – interspersed
with long trips to India, where one can live cheaply for long writing
spells – I moved to Edinburgh, where I'm still based. I spend
my days editing other people’s books, writing my own, running
my poetry magazine Anon, and hoping that I’ll get lucky
with a great idea for a new poem or a novel. |
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Correspondence:
Alma Books
London House
243-253 Lower Mortlake Road
Richmond
Surrey TW9 2LL |
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