Anna Woodford lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2003 she won an Eric Gregory Award and an Arvon/Jerwood Apprenticeship. In 2001 she received a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North. Anna has completed poetry residencies at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland and the Blue Mountain Center in the USA.

Her pamphlet The Higgins’ Honeymoon is published by Driftwood Publications (2001) and her work has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies including the TLS and Rialto.

She has worked on a commission for the Tyne & Wear Fire & Rescue Service and is Assistant Editor on the Odyssey Project based at Newcastle University. She is completing a PhD in creative writing.

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Books I love

An old favourite
'I first read Sharon Olds’s The Sign of Saturn at 16 and I’ve never fallen out of love with it.'

A new favourite
'Michael Longley is an old favourite and I’m savouring his new collection Snow Water.'

A current interest
'Fire! I’m in the middle of a residency for the Tyne & Wear Fire & Rescue Service – so far I’ve been shut in a burning building and posed as a photographic model in a mock-up RTA (road traffic accident) – I’m hoping these experiences will lead to poems somewhere along the line!'

Anna Woodford, April 2004

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Featured poem

Sex Education

Sister Ancilla bangs a ruler
at the trembling projector screen
where four naked girls stand up in themselves.
They have come to walk us through puberty,
beginning with the baby steps of the youngest,
who trails behind a bigger sister.
Next, a teenager takes our place in this line-up,
caught with her pants down, she doesn’t giggle or fidget.
Finally, the head girl is a fully rounded figure,
she is ready to break into a run, to bump into a man.

Sister Ancilla holds her ruler
and won’t let it drop.
She turns to look for a volunteer:
“Which girl will tell me what’s happening here?”

Anna Woodford © 2004