Anne Caldwell is our May Writer (click here for her writing exercise)

I was born in London and grew up in the north of England. After travelling and city life, I now live in a Pennine village called Pecket Well, on the moors, with my son, Anton. My poetry has been published in two anthologies - Poet's Cheshire(Headland) and The Nerve (Virago).  My work has appeared in many British magazines including Writing Women, Poetry Wales and Quattrocento.  I have currently just finished an MA in writing poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and I perform all over the UK.

I am also working on my first full length collection. I run a company called Sources that specialises in using text and visual art collaboratively with digital artist Jack Lockhart. We were recently commissioned to produce a poetry /animation for National Poetry Day in the UK, and this year we are off to Holland to find more writers and international artists to bring to England to work with us this summer. I am excited by the idea of writing being off the page and presented in many different ways.  I love working with musicians, visual artists and other creative people because collaboration challenges you out of your comfort zone and into someone's else's head space and I think that is good for a writer!

My work as described by Canadian Poet, Marilyn Dumont :

Anne Caldwell is able to identify the sound of broken things: bones, bodies, minds, dreams.  Her language is precise and she has discovered the right vowels for tenderness, disappointment and clarity. The reader can hear her voice in her work, and the tone is compassionate, frank and funny, but most of all wise – aware of our human shining and dullness.

My poetry writing exercise

This exercise is best done with a writing partner, but you could also do it on your own.

Take a blank piece of paper and at the top write down the name of an activity or sport.  For example, Swimming.
Then for five minutes, brainstorm onto the piece of paper all the words and phrases that you can think of that are associated with this activity.

I had down water, salt, wet hair, swimming pool, chlorine, etc etc.

Then hand this piece of paper to your partner.  They have to write about this activity without using any of the words and phrases that you had written on your paper.  You need to do the same with theirs.

Give each other ten to fifteen minutes to attempt this exercise.  Look at the material you have down and see if you can shape it into a simple five or six line poem that pushes the boundaries of language.  It's a great exercise to test your abilities to think outside the norm, and think about how language can be creative. 

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