Between the ages of 5 and 50, I pursued my passion for theatrical performance. Most of the poetry I enjoyed then was Shakespearean, though I also read Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, and Ted Hughes. I wrote plays but not poems. Following the murder of my sister in 1995, I began writing poems to and about her - a cliché, I know, but it was a good part of my grieving process. I then continued to develop an interest in writing poetry, devouring the work of many contemporary poets, as a way of learning a new craft. Inevitably, perhaps, my theatre background began to influence my poems, so that many of them comment on or are 'in the voices' of people (characters) that I have encountered.