I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences.

I also completed two novels fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.ĭuring this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.Īt around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Poetry was very important to me from childhood.

You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners, and can be recast from many viewpoints. In a large family you hear a great many stories. My father was the eldest of twelve, and this extended family has no doubt had a strong influence on my life, as have my own children. Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Gabon Republic, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greenland, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (U.S.I was born in December 1952, in Yorkshire, the second of four children.

The Tide Knot by Helen Dunmore