Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your career/published works or work-in-progress, including your Masters project(s)?  

I did the part-time MA online over three years, which comprised writing and editing workshops and several courses where I wrote essays on Plath’s use of humour and comedy, on the work of C D Wright in writing the political, and an exploration of the poetry pamphlet. My portfolio, supervised by Jean Sprackland, contained  several sections of poems. Poems from the end section appear in my recently published debut collection, Hard Drive (Carcanet 2023).

How do you think being part of the Manchester Writing School community has helped your writing career? 

It certainly helped me in terms or meeting other poets, producing new work and discussing what my first book might be. I had been writing for well over 10 years and had a first pamphlet behind me but given the different types of poems I’d written on an around different subject matter I wasn’t quite sure what to foreground. The MA allowed me to engage in some literary criticism and analysis. The MA provided me with the opportunity to read from my second pamphlet The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance 2016) as part of the Carol Ann Duffy evening reading series. Having a link to Manchester and MMU may well have helped me in securing publication from Manchester-based Carcanet. 

What did you find was your most valuable experience as part of the Manchester Writing School? What were the highlights?  

The summer school was undoubtedly the highlight each June it gave me a chance to spend some days in Manchester and to meet poets and tutors face to face. The programme contained a range of workshops. I remember vividly being there in 2016 and us all attending on day two like zombies after the referendum result took us all by surprise. 

What advice would you give to students looking at studying at the Manchester Writing School, or just starting out on the course?  

To read widely, to experiment with your writing. The course we did on writing poems ‘in the style of’ or as pastiches was a very useful way to discuss the particular stylistic devices of different writers and then to try to adopt their approach and apply it to your own writing.