The story of something I hesitate to call a career unless defined as ‘verb:

To move swiftly in an uncontrolled way.’

The first job I got in theatre was as a stage-hand at The Birmingham Rep. It was a cold winter, `the winter of discontent` (1979), and I was put in the flies operating levers for Babes in the Wood. Shocked by the industrial scale of regional rep, I went off to be an actor in Word in Action (Dorset), in every way the opposite. No props, no costumes, no lights, and all in the round. It was the best education I`ve ever had. But I craved a glimpse of the city.

I spent the next six years (1981-7) in London. It was the golden age of pub theatre.

I appeared in various short-lived fringe productions, but only found my feet after I met Chris Shirley Smith, director of The Puppet Tree. He asked me if I was a writer. I lied and said yes. He commissioned me to write a Punch and Judy show for giant puppets in Covent Garden (the piazza, not the Opera House), followed by two community musicals at the Shaw Theatre. During this time I also started running workshops, mainly for SHAPE and ILEA, particularly with older people.

In 1986, I spent a purgative, life-changing four months in Brazil and in 1987 I moved to Manchester, though my most enjoyable and fruitful work at the time was in Lincolnshire, where I wrote another community play, called The Dreaming Pond, directed by Alex Hallowes, this time for two villages, Upton and Kexby. Strangely I still refused to accept either that my real home was in the north of England or that writing was my real job. A brief return to London (1991-92), where I was encouraged by writer Stephen Clark, fortunately convinced me of both.

The experience of working with Remould Theatre Company (1990), the publication of `Interference` (1991), and the commissioning of my first radio play (1992), greatly bulked up my writing muscles. I`ve always been a late developer. In that year I also bought a house in Leeds and soon after that, having vowed never to have another relationship, I met my partner, the writer Mary Cooper. We have two sons, now in their twenties. Early on we also collaborated on 4 radio dramas for BBC Radio 4. I went on to write 3 on my own. Mary has written many more.

By this time, another strand had emerged. I`d started writing songs in Manchester, mentored by Dave Price OBE, but in London I become a very junior member of the Mercury Workshop, a loose grouping of musical theatre luminaries, many of whom had come through the masterclass Stephen Sondheim led at Oxford University in the early `90`s. Through the Mercury I met composer BB Cooper who asked me to write the book and lyrics for a musical about the Brontës, a subject which, I must confess, I`d never previously considered. It toured nationally.

For two years, from 1996, my life became completely subsumed in an Arts Council writing residency I did with young men in a South Yorkshire prison. Before then, the thought of doing work like this would have scared the pants off me. At HMP Moorland, we produced poetry anthologies, radio plays, and formed a band, 24/7, who went on to bring out a single. Since then I have worked a great deal in prisons, mainly with the charity Music in Prisons. Funny how half-heartedly filling in an application form can lead to a new and unforeseen direction in your life.

There have been other new directions since: site specific theatre projects with A Quiet Word, songwriting residencies with composer Hugh Nankivell for Opera North, Poem Portraits with photographic artist Lizzie Coombes, writing residencies with Loca and Father Figures. Becoming Director of Words with Heads Together at East Leeds FM/East Leeds Community Radio, now based at Chapel FM Arts Centre, sent me into a new and thoroughly engrossing phase, broadcasting and coordinating festivals (Writing On Air, Leeds/Dortmund 50). Long may it continue. I love being part of a vibrant writing community in Leeds and working alongside Chapel FM Director Tony Macaluso and other colleagues.

Indirectly ELFM also kicked me into a fertile stretch of songwriting and performing with multi-instrumentalist Richard Ormrod in Schwa. I’ve written over 150 songs, mostly settings of poetry, since 2010, resulting in 3 albums and 3 extended song cycles. With Dave Bowie Junior I wrote and performed The Weight of Smoke, a cycle of songs about Sir Walter Raleigh. Perhaps the single most satisfying event for me has been the publication of my first poetry collection, Quick, by Valley Press, followed in 2020 by my second collection, Frisk, with Yaffle. I do a great deal of work that lives in the moment but is gone. Of course it’s no less substantial because of that, and I still love writing plays (mostly recently Sand House at Cast in Doncaster), yet having something in print that was entirely my own and enthusiastically received was very gratifying. I’m looking to publish my 3rd collection in 2025.

Songwriting highlights for me have been Arrivals and Departures for the Rodillian Festival, and Song Portraits, a project I originated and delivered during the first lockdown of 2020, in which I wrote, performed and produced portraits in song of 9 older people in Leeds based on telephone conversations. Unsung Sports was a big project I devised and delivered in 2022 with Space2, celebrating non-mainstream sports and their communities. Unsung Sports 2023, a Leeds 2023 project, followed with a raft of new short films, podcasts, photo-portraits and songs. I’ve really enjoyed working with Dave Evans, arranger and bandleader with the amazing Chapel FM Jazz Collective.

I’ve become increasingly interested in international collaborations, organising several initiatives with writers in Dortmund, one of Leeds’s twin cities. But I love my own city. Which is why I`ve remained here writing a mixture of plays, radio plays, lyrics, librettos, poetry, and working in various community and education settings for a myriad of different groups. I don`t make any real distinction between the writing I do for professional actors and the writing I do with people in schools, day centres, or prisons. For me they’re two sides of the same writing life, both equally necessary and sustaining.