Colette Bryce was born in Derry in 1970 and has spent much of her adult life in London, working as a bookseller and editor.

Formerly writer in residence at the University of Dundee, she now lives in Newcastle and was appointed the North East Literary Fellow in 2005.

Having received an Eric Gregory Award in 1995, she won the National Poetry Competition 2003. Her first collection, The Heel of Bernadette was published in 2000, and her second, The Full Indian Rope Trick, in 2004.

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Related links

› Read Ideasfactory interview with Colette Bryce

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Books I love

An old favourite
'Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. I find my way back to them every few years and am always a little changed by the experience.'

A new favourite
'Hare Soup by Dorothy Molloy. Hugely interesting first collection from an authentic new voice.'

A current interest
'Louise Bourgeois. Still creating powerful art in her nineties, still
remaining true to the source.'

Colette Bryce, April 2004

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Featured poem

Pillar Talk

That magician
who stationed himself on a pillar

over Manhattan
for thirty-five hours

knows nothing whatever
of loneliness,

or how it is
for people like us

who have no soft acre
of cardboard boxes

not even the eggshell
flashbulbs of the press

or the well-meant antics
of neighbours with a mattress

to temper the thought
of the hard, hard earth

to break the fall

nothing at all.

© Colette Bryce