What draws you in? What makes you move or stay? What makes your heart sing? Hosting a cabin retreat space for other writers made me want to live a simpler life. I've lived on a narrowboat, I've lived in a tiny bothy, and small space living has been calling me back for a few years. So when I visited a wooded valley of twelve cedar chalets built in the 1960's I knew it was the place for me. One year later, after radically reducing my stuff, the valley has become home.

In West Penwith at the very far end of Cornwall the full might of Storm Goretti was felt - trees fell, power and water supplies were cut off. Between the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel, where the land measures five and a half miles across, my moorland home was battered. It has endured a lot of rough weather in the two hundred years since it was built as the administration house for Ding Dong Mine and it's squat granite mass with low sloping roof survived this extreme weather event....

I don't find it easy to send work out to poetry magazines and most of the time it's a 'no' alongside an encouraging note to 'keep going'...