Alison Grove, London Independent Story Prize 2024 2nd Competition Poetry Finalist by 'Beyond Woolwich'

London Independent Story Prize 2024 2nd Competition Poetry Finalist 'Beyond Woolwich' by Alison Grove

Can you please tell us about you and your daily life?

I live in the North West Highlands of Scotland, where I’ve done a variety of jobs over the years to fit around child care and writing.  Just now I work in a primary school.

- When and how did you get into writing?

I’ve always written…. diaries, letters, parodies…. but not long before my children were born, I started writing and submitting short fiction.  My stories have appeared in a number of competition anthologies and small press journals as well as broadcast on BBC Radio.

I returned to writing after a break of several years, kick started by an on-line writing course offered by Unison during lockdown.  The relaxed approach and accessibility of this course encouraged me to attempt poetry for the first time. 

- How often do you write? Do you have a writing routine? And what inspires you to write?

Sitting down to write is usually in fits and starts – I am somehow less disciplined now than when my children were tiny.  I find bad weather is helpful.

Inspiration is everywhere – at work, shopping, on TV, reading, eating, driving, staring out of a window.  I write down ideas, phrases, word pictures – often garbled – in a scatter of notebooks.  Sometimes I am reunited with them and a story or poem gets a start.

- How does it feel to have your work recognised?

Uplifting.  For a while it banishes those negative thoughts. 

- What's the best and most challenging thing about writing poetry? 

Best is when an idea looks like it might work. 

Most challenging is managing not to beat the life out of your idea while wrestling it onto the page.

-  How did you develop the idea for your LISP-selected poem? Is there a story behind your poem? And, how long have you been working on it?

I think the story behind this poem is commonplace.  Who hasn’t sat on a bus (or whatever) and considered travelling further than planned?  Who can really imagine their own future?  How many of us are working to an actual plan?  

This poem has been percolating since my lockdown kickstart, gradually pruned and tweaked into this final version. 

- Can you please give us a few tips about writing a poem?

I can only say what’s worked for me:

Unearth and decipher what you have written in your notebooks.  Sit and get some words down in no particular order.  Then try to edit without killing the spark.  It’s more perspiration than inspiration.  Learn to love your own company and hope for bad weather. 

- What's the best thing and the most challenging thing about competitions?

Best is the incentive to polish up your work to send out into the world.  

The challenge is to avoid editing out the honesty precisely because you know others will read your words. 

- Lastly, do you recommend that writers submit to LISP?

Of course! 

Submitting work that feels honest and personal is a challenge, but that buzz when someone else ‘gets it’ is hard to beat.