On 27 October 2019 I had the awe-struck pleasure of reading in Manchester Cathedral as the winner of that year’s Poetry Prize with ‘Mary Magdalene in the Desert’. The judge the wonderful Anthony Wilson, described it as a ‘stunning monologue’, ‘the poem that wouldn’t let go of me when I was out and about doing other things’. It was also rather sweary and it did feel slightly odd reading it in a Cathedral but it was a fabulous event with readings from other winning and commended poems and also from Anthony himself.

All winning and commended poems were published in an anthology. The whole experience gave me a new lease of poetry life and I starting writing more again…