Draft to Publication 1

When I was 16 I read a piece that had made its way into a Faber & Faber anthology by a young poet called Mark Jones. He would become famous as Mark Lamarr, but his 'Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die'  sparked that first idea that poetry wasn't just sonnets and villanelles. I was far too young to appreciate those; I write them now, in my 40s.

Then I read Lady Macbeth, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Poetry began to make sense, and I have been using it to make sense of the world around me ever since.

Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die

I'm the James Dean of the dole queue

You've got to admire my cheek 

Trying to work out how to live fast and die young

On seventeen-fifty a week

A legend in my own cubicle

All alone, never one of the mob

I'm the James Dean of the dole queue

A rebel without a job