Do you think it’s important young writers ought to have their own platform rather than one integrated with older, perhaps more experienced writers? How did it help you? Actually, I’ve never felt as if I was separate from older writers. I think it’s important to learn from people who have been doing this a lot longer than me. When I won the Foyle Young Poets competition as a moody teenager, it was great meeting other young writers, of course. But the most valuable part of the prize for me was the Arvon course with established writers as our tutors. They suggested poets to read, magazines to look at and shared their own experiences. In a strange kind of way, I don’t like being labelled as a ‘young poet’ at all. I want people to read my work because they’re interested in the poems and what they have to say, not because of who I happen to be. The poet is insignificant, the poetry is crucial. Though, then again, poems are often like diagrams of the writer’s own consciousness, so I’m not suggesting you can always separate someone’s writing from their life, the way they think. You grew up up North – do you think this affected your writing? Do you think area affects writing in general? Chesterfield, occupies a strange geographical space. Technically, many people would say it’s Midlands, but we all think of ourselves as coming from the North. Northerness is as much a state of mind as anything. I’m obsessed by place in my work and particularly the area where I grew up. In fact, the further I am away from it, the more I get the urge to write about it. When I was living in the Lake District, I was surrounded by imposing mountains and placid lakes but writing poems about the landfill sites and abandoned pubs round where I’m from. I’d write about it in the way you write about an ex lover. The place you come from is always something you imagine and reinvent,