My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986.
However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.
In 1971, when I was 29, I wrote my first volume of poetry. I am a poet, and I have published four books of my poems.
I feel that I'm a poet first. Not only was poetry the first genre in which I wrote, it's the genre that serves as the basis for my practice as a writer.
I have also written some poems which have not been collected in a volume.
The more I read my poems, the more I find out about them. I still read them with the same passion I felt when I wrote them as a young man.
Poetry had great powers over me from my childhood, and today the poems live in my memory which I read at the age of 7 or 8 years and which drove me to desperate attempts at imitation.
I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought, 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry,'
My first book was an adult novel, 'Down Among the Gods,' published by Virago, and I've written poems as well, a slim volume of poetry.
My first book was poetry, but I didn't write it first. I wrote it third. So my first two books were prose.