Welcome to my website, where you will find – should you wish – poems about madness, my mother, eating testicles, menstruation and everything else under the sun.  Lots of these poems have appeared previously in specialist magazines, Writing Women published at least five and even paid me, Orbis gave me the Readers Prize for best poems that issue, Poetry and Audience, Obsessed with Pipework and The Rialto have shown my work, Tears in the Fence have published me and the poem ‘A Present from One of the Young People’ came best runner up in the associated East Street Poets competition last autumn. Psychopoetica, the magazine of the Psychology Department at the University of Hull, published the title poem after which this website is named. Just to show you my provenance is larger than my ego!  Are you sitting comfortably? Then crack open a beer, spark up if that is your persuasion, and I’ll do my best to keep you entertained. And thank you, too, for reading this far, this website is designed for open minded people like you who’ll give me half a chance. Cheers!

My novel, Ravenstowe, is a realistic narrative set in a colliery village in the North Notts coalfield in the 1970’s, and describes the adventures of my teenaged heroines, Jane and Lynne Leonard. I wanted to see how you got from point A, when something unthinkable has happened, to point B six months in the future, and at first I hadn’t the least idea how to make that process articulate. I found out chapter by chapter, assuming an unreliable love and loyalty between Jane and Lynne, and a shared sense of humour.  I drew on real events so both sisters would find out the hard and realistic way about themselves and each other, and make sense of their lives in the light of that painful and extraordinary process of self discovery. The humour gleams throughout, and ultimately triumphs, as various populations under Communism agreed; every joke is a tiny revolution. Every joke helps Jane and Lynne regain a sense of proportion and helps them make sense of what results from their antics, laughter is healing and a reassurance that Jane and Lynne haven’t changed or lost each other, whatever shit has hit the fan. Even tragedy is entertaining. You emerge from the theatre, or put the book down, and red buses are still running and the pubs are brightly lit and those serious, comforted feelings as normal life resumes, that uprush of gladness, are the feelings I hope Ravenstowe evokes.

I’ll finish so you can read it, unlike the publishers I’ve tried! On average it took them three months to return my work with a form rejection letter assuring me they’d read it carefully, but the pages would still be untouched and exactly as they’d come off the printer. I could never quite work that one out. Thank you, and bon voyage with Jane and Lynne!