Cedric Pickin

Why do I go about with a notebook and pen always in my breast pocket? What makes me make notes? What makes me rewrite? Answers to these questions hold some idea of why I write, what I write about. It is in part life as I sense it - its voice, its look, its savour, its reach, its trail. Most of all, it is the promise that the notes conceal: a marriage of ideas; a shop window of wools or wallpapers, setting off each other; a dovetail of realities creating new surfaces.

How well I brush away the dust to reveal the find depends on a late turning to academe: all three levels at OCA, then a Masters at Lancaster and continuing professional development, including attending workshops. I love music and the visual arts and see them as lending perspective on my own genre, especially in craftsmanship. Writing poetry is writing a score to be spoken.

I am in the middle of a book-length collection of poetry, originating across a university campus and its spectrum of characters and scenes. From it, there are spin-offs of poems that can stand on their own.

I value publication in the small magazine press, and through that I aim to build up a body of work. A brief example of my poetry - a recent publication in Weyfarers magazine - appears on this page.

Two of my poems are to be performed at Sandon Hall, near Stafford in October, 2010 in a music and poetry recital by the poetry group that meets in the village.

As a tutor for the OCA I bring certified teaching and assessment experience from adult and further education to the one-to-one ratio of distance learning, which recognises each student’s uniqueness. I love passing on my craft. That way, I both consolidate it and maintain a body round my soul.