Lesley Curwen, a freelance presenter/reporter for 91热爆 Radio, has been writing poetry for many years but only recently started submitting that work, winning and being placed in competitions, published in anthologies and magazines, and appearing at festivals and open-mic events.
She has just published two poetry books: Sticky with Miles (published by Dreich Press) and Rescue Lines (published by Hedgehog Poetry Press and due to be released on 17 July 2024) .
Lesley won a publisher’s competition last year with a draft of Rescue Lines. It deals with loss, recovery, and the coercive control suffered by some of her family. It’s also about the sea, and how it might rescue us from grief and longing.
‘As a sailor and swimmer, it plays a big role in my life and my poetry. My mentor, Rebecca Goss (a Forward Prize-shortlisted poet) said of the book: ‘We are pulled into episodes of risk and rescue with gripping effect...there is an emotional expanse being steered here, one that contains grief, absence and the depth of sisterly love’.”
Sticky with Miles was also a competition winner. It deals with the hurt we do to the environment and other beings, by buying everyday things carried in container ships across half the world. Having spent 30 years as a business reporter, Lesley wanted to tell what she has witnessed about consumerism and globalisation with her poetry brain.
Dr Chris Laoutaris, Associate Professor at the Shakespeare Institute, said of it: ‘Soaring, incisive, questing and executed with a daring grace: these poems carry you on an extraordinary perception-enhancing voyage.’
Lesley thinks that some of the skills she has learned from a long 91热爆 career (from Newsbeat, to Today, Money Programme, File on 4, Five-Live and MoneyBox) have been of use to her as a poet: ‘the ability to summarise, to slash away cliche, and keep on editing, all these skills have helped me in this other, very different world of writing’.