‘The students praised you for being friendly, good humored, accessible; they loved that you cared about them, called them by name, remembered them and their work. You had fun assignments that got them writing, even if they’d never thought of themselves as writers/poets before.’

Dr Roberta Klein, St Stephens and St Agnes School, Alexandria, USA.

The worst thing about being a writer, I find, is having to work not so much by myself, but with myself. I sometimes think I’m the most un-co-operative person I’ve ever met – more so even than the teenagers I took for Media Studies during my teaching practice.

So I really enjoy those aspects of my work that bring me into contact with others.

Teaching

Universities

I taught creative writing for around ten years with adults and undergraduates at the University of Leeds’ School of Continuing Education, and ran the University’s annual creative writing summer school. I also worked with novelist Martyn Bedford to set up a Creative Writing programme for undergraduates in the School of Cultural Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University. This is now running as an elective module, offered to second and third year students.

Schools

I relish helping children see that poetry isn’t just something they can read, but something they can write (and re-write). I have held several short residencies in schools, for example at St Agnes and St Stephens School in Washington DC, USA, at St Aidan’s Church of England High School and at Ashville College (both in Harrogate).  You can read some student poems in Creative Writing at St Aidan’s. I was delighted to discover the other day that Ashville School in Harrogate have been using my poem What I Know during their interview process for Junior School students entering Senior School.

Adult ed

Adult education is something of a crusade with me. Why should we have to stop learning just because our hair’s receding or our breasts now reach our waist? I run a week’s poetry summer school every year in Bilsdale, North Yorkshire. The group are mostly former students of mine (ex Leeds University) but since 2000 when we started, we’ve picked up several new recruits.

Writing Residencies

The most substantial writing residencies I’ve done are for the MAMA East African Women’s Group, Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, and Yorkshire Forward.

At MAMA, I worked with Somali women to write and edit the stories of their lives. In 2007, the work came to fruit with the publication of two books: Traveling with the Bedouin Women of Hawd and The Asylum Seeker.

‘A fascinating read, warm human and a fantastic way of being educated about the recent history of Somalia without being overloaded with dry historical facts. I love the two main female characters, feisty, funny and tremendous ambassadors for their country.’

Comedienne Jo Brand, on The Asylum Seeker.

At LTH Trust, I worked with patients and staff using writing. I was there for several years on and off and during that time, my core work was one-to-one, witnessing and documenting people’s hospital experience, usually in a poem or short prose piece, or mentoring their writing: I was midwife to two novels (one of which was accepted for publication in December 2004) and a non-fiction book. I also co-developed a writing module for medical students. I worked on lots of different wards: heart, maternity, elderly, teenage cancer, breast cancer and eating disorder and went around sticking poems up in the lifts faster than the cleaners could take them down. I also wrote poems in response to my own experience of being there.

If you’d like more detail, there’s an excellent and honest report about one of the residency’s phases on the Arts Council’s website.

For YF, I co-authored a book with Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Urban Design, Alan Simpson, on Yorkshire’s Urban Renaissance. It was called Renaissance Towns: Visions, Actions, Realities and was published in 2005.

Creative Commissions

From time to time, I get commissioned to write poems and stories, either working alone or with an artist or photographer. Light Transports is a great example: in October 2006, three anthologies of short stories were handed out on station platforms throughout Yorkshire.

Copywriting

When I first went freelance back in 1988, the staple of my work was copywriting: helping companies write their corporate and sales literature.  I still do the occasional copywriting job these days.

Talks and Readings

Recently, I was invited to give a talk at a Writers’ Circle. Not having had much truck with the glamorous side of writing, I thought it best to focus on the seedy side. The talk went well, and made people laugh, partly I think because it’s an aspect that gets missed out when everyone is busy talking about four-figure advances, prize-winning ceremonies and record-breaking book sales. It also gave them ideas for interim projects of their own, while their own bestsellers were waiting to be accepted by publishers. Or written.

So, that subject joins the list of things I’m more than happy to talk about for fifteen minutes to an hour. Which brings the total to a staggering three:

  • Writing in a healthcare setting
  • Reading and talking/leading a discussion about my own poems and/or stories
  • The unglamorous side of freelance writing