When did you realise that poetry was for you?

Quite early on, really. I didn't start writing till I was 18. When I was at Hull University, Larkin was there. He wasn't an influence, but I was aware that he was a poet. There was a University Poetry Society, but that seemed to me rather elitist. It wasn't actually, but if you come from a working-class family and have not had access to that before, then you mistrust it. As I was writing poems then, I thought I must be a poet. I didn't necessarily think it was a career, but I thought that whatever I do, wherever my life leads me, I will always be writing poems.

Some people would be witty in groups, but I would go home and think of things to say and what I could have said and write it down instead. I didn't do English literature at university, similar to Ted Hughes. So I came into it with a slight naivety, which meant that I was not afraid to put pen to paper. I wasn't comparing myself to other writers and I didn't have to show it to a tutor who might have said: "Forget it."

When I was younger, I wanted to be an illustrator
or an actor, but I was told I wasn't good enough. As a poet, I wrote alone so there was no one who could criticise me. Some things I wrote were about what was going on at the university, which I had published in the newspaper rather than the poetry magazines.



Who were your inspirations?

When I was growing up, I remember The Liverpool Echo. In the paper, it had a little strip cartoon called Curly Wee and Gussie Goose. There used to be a verse and prose section like in Rupert Bear and I always used to read the verse.

As I grew up, it was Brian Patten and Adrian Henry. When I was at university, I remember Christopher Lowe came and did a reading and some of his poetry was political-satirical. I used to like reading French ballad-style poetry and Dylan Thomas. Nowadays, I get my inspiration from listening to other people, reading other poems and carrying around a notebook for taking notes.



In the preface to your Collected Poems you write: "The line that divides children's poetry from adult's is a blurred one." Do you write with a specific target audience in mind?

I have a new book called Slapstick coming out in August, which I would like to be for adults as well as children. People think immediately that when a book has illustrations, it is a children's book, but in this book some poems can be recited as adult poems as well. Publishers nowadays will put the ranges on books of what age group the book
is for, like 7-9, 9-11 and I think it's daft.

Adults should read poetry aloud to children more often. It's as important as reading them stories. I remember it was poetry that my mother used to read to me as a child, rather than stories.



Do you think you would ever write prose or will you stick to poetry?

I wrote my memoirs Said and Done two or three years ago. I enjoyed it, but it was hard going. I was aware that this was a very different job to writing poetry. I had to keep changing full stops to commas to keep it going on and had to explain what I meant more.



At the beginning of Bad Bad Cats you write: "Writing the poems was/great fun to do/now they need readings OVER TO YOU!" How do you think children could become more interested in reading and writing?

In a sense, there have always been distractions; outside is a distraction. In a way, it's about making it cool. All kids, at some point in their lives, don't want to go with the herd. Poetry is about getting away from everything and it can also be used as drama in the sense of reading aloud and sharing. It should not be posh or exclusive. When I first started teaching in Liverpool, I had these kids who didn't like poetry and they were given Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Verse, which is the one that I had when I was at school and I hadn't enjoyed. I started reading them the poems that I had written. They enjoyed them and I realised I had an audience for what I was doing. Occasionally, I meet people who say that they remember me doing a reading when they were younger and that is what got them interested in poetry, which is great. Not everyone can be a poet, but the important thing is that children are not afraid of poetry and that they enjoy it.



In the Ted Hughes Poetry competition that you are launching, there are three different age categories between the ages of 6 and 18. Would you give different advice to those different age groups who will be writing and entering their poems?

For the younger ones, I would say that perhaps doing the little drawings are part of the writing process. Being a teacher, it is very hard to try and get the children not to simply describe what is going on, but to be something. So, if they are writing about Guy Fawkes Night, don't just describe what you do by the crackling and the riddling; imagine what it's like to be the Guy or the rocket; have that power of being something else. I would give that advice to all age groups. When you are a teenager, you feel the pain of the world upon you. Writing a poem about global warming or pollution by urging
humanity to turn over a new leaf won't work as a poem. You have to find
some way of getting inside that to be a poet.

The Ted Hughes Poetry competition, launched by Roger McGough, is being run by The Elmet Trust and Calderdale Libraries. The theme is "Memories" and entries must be received by Sep 19. Winners in each age group will be announced at the Ted Hughes Festival in Mytholmroyd on Oct 22 and for details on how to enter contact anna.turner@ calderdale.gov.uk