Started writing poems when I was in the middle of the blockbuster novel that was going to make my fortune – a reaction to a surfeit of prose. Then found it was the ideal form for me – the way you can write things in code or maybe get at something more obliquely. I think writers are very dodgy characters and poetry is where the most dodgy ones live.

Recipe: start with a question – or a word or phrase – or a feeling – or an idea. Try out several versions of the initial impulse and see what words accrue around it let it gather words like a centrifugal force or a stick put into candy floss - look at what you’ve got – shape it again. Don’t overdo it or the initial impulse will be buried and that’s not usually good. But don’t leave it with bits trailing off either cos that’s just annoying. Aim for perfection. Fail constantly but feel the need to try again.

I think I’m also trying to find a female voice – not necessarily/only my own.

From As If (Vane Women 2001)

Girl From the North Country

Her eyes: sad, blue, shadow-smudged

Her smile: slow and wide

In the attic room we hang a rope
You, me and the Irish girl Pat
Who turned out to be pregnant

Each morning we rise at seven
And saunter, sleep-logged to the restaurant
To serve sleazy breakfasts

Pat has to work hard to stay upright
And not vomit on the punters’ eggs
Which swim like the foetus she saw on the scan

In a sea of green grease

All day we clean rooms, moving from
Floor to floor with bucket and cloth and dodgy hoover
Breathing the smells of other people’s lives

You teach me to read the evidence in the bathroom sink.
Detectives at the scene of a crime
Littered with clues, if you know where to look.

All night we talk and smoke and look out
Over the rooftops, murmuring, private
Like the pink and grey pigeons who live beside us

The rope? Rapunzels. The housekeeper is a witch
She holds our shadows pinned inside her cloak
There are no mirrors

Time passes. Pat’s overall will not button.
Her young man hacks clear through the thicket
And carries her off to bear their son.

Your small strong hand in mine, I jump.
Through the long drop, my life chases me
Until, an inch from the pavement, we meet.

We reclaim our shadows. At King’s Cross
Your black-gloved hand salutes me as you
Glide northwards where I will follow.

Our Kennedy Moment (from As If)
(for R.C.)

It’s like a dream
us on the dance floor lapped by limelight
performing our celebration rite as the crowds applaud
last of the species married not divorced
unlikely as a pair of surviving Kennedys.

A flash of Dallas and I wonder,
was it the moment when she knew
the stuff in her lap
wasn’t sperm meant for Marilyn
but the contents of his cranium
thus refuting her belief
that his brains were in his balls?

Camelot crumbles. She sits
his head dripping onto her dress
as their lives unreel
behind the car.

Fast forward.
Next thing she knows
she’s walking behind his coffin
mantillaed in black lace
eclipsing his stars and stripes.

So you and I
scared of our own shadows
the no risk option holding on
to what we salvaged from our holocaust pasts.
Some madness struck me, a sense
of being out of step.
Wrong footed by my life
I tried to dance away from you.

Here tonight, back in your arms
I’m Jack raised from the dead
the hole hardly showing from the back.
And you, beautiful, contained as Jackie
how will I ever know
if you forgive me?

Rose Tattoo (published in Sand Issue 1 2003)

When I come home a long-stemmed dark red
Leonard Cohen rose
arabesques upwards from the bottle
which contained the wine
we drank last night.

I remember the tattoo place in Bowburn
the man with the bone head
who held your leg tenderly,like a lover
and tapped out a morse rose on your skin

I was looking through a doorway
like into a Vermeer
while the girl who worked there
showed me photos of her intimate piercings

The man’s nikes hold the current steady
Your voice murmurs under the needle

I glimpse your hands signalling
furious, energetic
like birds trapped in a cage.

You are waving not drowning.
I watch myself wave back.

The Miss Haversham Papers (SAND as above)

Hope and disappointment balance the scales
The result is a tranquil zero

I rise early, bathe my face in dew
Look out on a May morning
Put on my dress for you

Life begins and ends on the same day

In the churchyard my white dress flutters
Like a flag of surrender
Clouds freeze in the sky
I am a stone angel
Rooted to my witness spot
Transfixed

The cake is a white tower
Reaching to heaven
Damask dazzles
I am snowblind
Mummified in satin rags

I place a ringless hand on the table
Begin my zombie walk
Learn to live with absence
Like the loss of a limb

After a while white becomes sepia
A forgotten photograph
Found in the drawer of a new house
The tatters of my satin dress trail behind me
My skin has dried to faded rose petals

One tear each year
A slow stalactite
Suspended over my life
A cold crystal dagger
Waiting for you

I rise early
Look out over a May morning
See you ride over the fields
Remember your blue eyes
The warmth of your hand.

Hunger (From Punchdrunk Ek Zuban 2005)

Nice clean plate he used to say
wiping the last heel of bread
around the residue of his meal
mopping up.

Leaving food was waste
an unforgivable sin
we weren’t permitted
to commit

He’d lived behind the wire
eating scraps when red cross parcels
failed to materialise.
Always hungry.

He’d watched the Russian prisoners
eke out meagre lives
fine down to kindling
snap underfoot.

“We all talk food these days
and say how we will gorge ourselves
on our return – so keep
the larder stocked.”

He turned food to tyranny
made us swallow down
the hated egg custard
ignored our tears.

I wish I’d known that on the journey home
he’d sliced flesh from a dead horse
ate it raw as they marched across Poland
no soles to his boots.

Grandmaster (Ek Zuban as above)

He teaches her chess with a cheap set
bought at the NAAFI
explains each piece, its position and moves
She listens, a serious child,
her fringe pinned back
wary hazel eyes attentive
a fawn receives instruction from a snake.

The pawns are worthless -
Foot soldiers born to sacrifice
Drawn forward by tales of glory
A blinkered band of brothers
With hidden dreams.

Rooks are castles solid as a rock
travel in straight lines cover ground
But they do not move her.
Inside, there’s boiling oil
A tethered princess.

The Queen on her colour, her wayward crown,
her mad ambition, dangerous.
Runs rings around the bishop
Her laughter pierces like shards of glass
Mocks the mournful king
Locked, suspicious, on his square.

She loves the knight, his mounted grace
The magic of his patterned move
Transforms the board to a new world
Where other paths are possible.

Dream on (in next collection Weeping for the Lovely Phantoms)

As if our intricate labyrinthine code
could be deciphered through an hour long perusal
of the net curtain hung in your window
its Lancastrian rose motif repeated
over and over

Snow White Rose Red
Don’t beat your lover dead

Sometimes her image does not appear in the mirror.
She loses face – in fact
she practically gives it away,
photosynthesises in the dark
like a mushroom.
Purity is easy through willed disappearance.
She melts beside the fire
she builds for others.

Snow White Rose Red
Don’t lie down upon his bed

Late evening sun ignites the nets
recasts the scene in a warm synthetic glow.
A rose is a cunt is a rose
flushed with exposure.
It’s not that she enjoys humiliation:
her nature binds her to it
like a briar winds around a trellis

Snow White Rose Red
Remember everything he said

In the cave everything and nothing makes sense.
The duality paralyses
cancels her out.
She’s striped like a barber’s pole
strobed unconscious
anaesthetised

There aren’t enough kisses in the world
to morph the bear
even though you could have sworn
you saw a glint of gold
beneath his rough exterior.

Snow White Rose Red
You’ll never get inside his head

It was just a trick of the light.
Tiptoe past him on your way out.
Leave him to his long winter sleep.