As a boy, I loved exploring the streets and surrounding countryside of my hometown of Otley in West Yorkshire. I don’t know why, but I was always drawn to the many snickets and ginnels in the town, the shortcuts and inbetween places where the air was still and you could be completely alone for a while. After an argument during dinner with my parents one evening, I stormed off and rode my bike to a ginnel a few streets away. I still remember this because any anger I’d felt during the argument soon disappeared and what was left was the soft light and warmth of a summer evening and a heightened consciousness of my presence within it. Although it would still be years before I wrote any poems, it was perhaps one of my first memories of seeing the world as a poet. I stayed in the ginnel for half an hour at most, then cycled home.
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