Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year - meet the shortlist

Raymond AntrobusWho/ What inspired you to start writing? I never started writing poetry with the intention of writing books until publishers approached me. I was happy to write poems and travel and read the poems for audiences. I live poem by poem. The idea of a book of poems doesn’t really enter my consciousness until I have a chunk of poems written, then I can look at the relationship between them and how they speak to each other. If I knew then what I know now... Having a teacher tell me to stop trying to emulate Frank O'Hara and Phillip Larkin was great advice and I learned there is such thing as bad influences when it comes to reading for the sake of writing. What's your favourite line from literature? This is a huge and impossible question but I've had the line "Your joy is your sorrow unmasked" by Kahlil Gibran in my head for years. I think it taught me a lot about living and writing and how not to separate happiness from sadness. Good poems are impossible to write without a very clear grasp of this concept. This is kind of builds on Keat's "negative capabilities" idea too. What is next for you? I have a children’s picture book coming out with Walkers publishing in the US/Canada in 2020 and UK in 2021. It's called ‘Can Bears Ski’? and it is illustrated by deaf artist and children’s book maker, Polly Dunbar. I’m also writing my next book of poems Julia Armfield Who/ What inspired you to start writing?I’ve always written, which is unquestionably connected to the... Continue reading at 'British Council global'

[ British Council global | 2019-12-05 12:09:15 UTC ]

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