How did you first engage with poetry?
I did not engage with poetry at school. As a teen, I wrote poems under duress and never identified with the poetry of the Irish Intermediate and Leaving Certificate syllabuses. I completely switched off, although I did submit something to our school magazine. The Chaplin, Fr Charlie, singled it out to read at assembly and said it was brilliant. I was 16 or 17, sunk down in my seat as I was absolutely mortified! When I was approaching forty, I joined a Creative Writing class ran by Ruth Carr at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast. Ruth was the first person to show me a world of written poetry far removed from what was enforced at school.
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