I started writing poetry in my early teens – some fairly dreadful bedroom angst – inspired by Hopkins, Yeats, Blake, and Dylan Thomas, amongst others. There was a visionary fire in their words, flaring softly in my mind like lit magnesium. I loved that light, that bright white incandescent light. I've been writing by it ever since.

I've been writing for nearly thirty years now, mostly poetry, mostly in rhyme and metre (although latterly I've moved away from this to freer verse). I've always tried to write in simple, clear, modern English, within a tight but topic-appropriate framework of form.

I feel sometimes as though I've always written. As far back as I can remember, it was a secret, almost sacred, place to go. A space apart where I could, by dint of practice or accident, make my own words shine.

Poetry is not some sort of hobby or pastime to me, it's not extra-curricular, it's not stamp-collecting – it's what I do and who I am, as much a vocation as the Church or Medicine. I know how precious, pretentious even, this sounds, but I mean it. Try to live by it. Put my words where my mouth is every morning I sit down to write.

Contact Simon by email: simon@simonharrison.wanadoo.co.uk