I wrote poetry long before I became embroiled in fiction. I was 12 and had just started school at St Barnabas College . My English teacher got us to create an anthology of favourite poems. I spent hours trawling through books in the local and school library. I'm talking here about the dark ages before the internet. At any rate, this first dip into poetry soaked the form into my bloodstream through my fingertips as I licked pages to turn them. I didn't always understand the poems but they stirred the embers of a certain something in me. A something my 12 year old self couldn't quite name but felt compelled to rake up into the steady flicker of a pilot flame. And so it began. While other girls my age were writing in their diaries, I was filling a notebook with poems. Some of these I shared with my mother – my harshest critic. Others I kept to myself because, they voiced my teenage angst – you know, the kind only a teenager can possess. ...
I write therefore I am