Authors Electric

     I can't count the many strange and beautiful things and places I’ve seen in my life – thundering Icelandic waterfalls fringed with towering icicles; hot water seething under the sand on a beach in New Zealand; aurora borealis from a midnight boat approaching Tromso; the eeerie loveliness of the Alhambra, islands, downlands, lakes, meteor showers, the moon…I’d love to be able to say that they have inspired me to write poetry, but no. I’ve gawped and gaped, felt awe, wonderment, deep joy, but I’ve not been able to put any of it into words. When I’ve tried I haven’t often managed to capture the essence in a way that satisfies, although I’ve tried   - and several of the poems in my first collection, Passing Places, have been set off by particular landscapes - but there is something about Keyhaven, that keeps messing with my head and making poems.  There, a shingle bank stretches for over a mile out into the Solent. It started life as a geological oddity but s...

          This is a picture of the Mud Maid, a sculpture in the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. It's here because it's one of the few times I have been directly and immediately inspired to create a story. In fact, the story created itself. It dropped into my head when I saw the sculpture and I sat down under a tree, excavated a pen and an old envelope from the depths of my handbag, and scribbled it down.           It very rarely happens like that. I remember watching the waves tumbling about in the Race off Portland Bill, and thinking, 'Cor! They do look exactly like white horses!' That experience, knitted together with the-baby-who-won't-stop-crying theme, courtesy of my firstborn child, begat Rory McRory.           A loving and crazy gift of a little soft toy goose engendered Goose Anna while we were tooling back down the M40. On the whole,...