However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

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.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

If the garden of Eden really exists it does so moment by moment, fragmented and tough, cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a deserted warehouse, or in a heap of frozen cabbages becoming luminous in the reflected light of roadside snow.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.