My parents came from the Indian side of Punjab. My father arrived in Bradford in the late fifties then settled in Yiewsley (near Heathrow Airport). My mother came to Britain in the early sixties. My brother, Daljinder, was born in 1964 and I arrived in 1966.

We lived in Yiewsley until I had taken my CSEs in 1982 and then moved to Sheffield where my parents bought a shop, in Gleadless Valley. Both Yiewsley and Sheffield were predominantly white working class areas at the time.

At University, Professor Martin Dodsworth encouraged me to continue writing poetry after I showed him a poem of mine (he’s one of the men on the image left). However, I didn’t have the confidence to continue writing after leaving university and didn’t start writing again until I turned 30.

When I first started writing poetry with the aim of getting published I booked myself on a one-to-one tutorial with Ruth Padel. This was part of a South Bank Centre initiative in 1998 where anyone could get feedback on their work from an established poet. I showed her the few poems I had written and she encouraged me to send my poems to magazines. I also had a one-to-one meeting via The Poetry Society with Angela Dove who also encouraged me to get my poems published in magazines. These two meetings really made me take poetry writing seriously as they were critical yet positive about the potential in my poems.

I later booked some one-to-one feedback sessions with Pascale Petit who helped me develop my editing skills. She was always honest in her opinions and I really valued this with regard to my work. I went to Pascale’s tutorial groups for about 2 years and they really helped me develop many of my poems in my first collection. She was also the first big publisher, as editor of Poetry London, to publish a poem of mine (an early version of Digging) and I gave my first ever reading as guest reader for the launch of that particular edition of PL.

Feedback sessions with Moniza Alvi were really good confidence builders as well. Working with good poets helped me to keep my self-esteem afloat. I’d often feel I was wasting my time trying to get published when a series of magazines would reject my poems, so meeting the likes of Moniza helped massively. I am also grateful to her in other ways as she was the only poet of ‘Asian’ origin that I’d heard of in contemporary poetry and reading about her in Poetry Review’s New Generation Poets inspired me to think it was possible for someone to write about ‘Asians’ and be successful in poetry. The poetry world had always felt conservative, cerebral and obsessed with the Greeks and the Romans, so reading Moniza Alvi’s The Country at My Shoulder was my biggest influence since coming across Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience in my late teens.

I never really enjoyed the writing-to-order side of workshop groups as I found it extremely difficult to write poems under pressure. Perhaps I am too in control of my emotions and therefore struggle to open up in group settings where I am given a writing exercise. I enjoyed the discussion side of such groups and getting feedback on my work made me appreciate audience response, especially as so many of my poems had got too cluttered after months - and in some cases years - of editing in isolation. Feedback always helps me get to the final version of the poem that bit quicker. All writing is collaboration is so many ways – whether it is the influence of other poems/songs/nursery rhymes you hear from childhood or the actual support from poets about how to make a poem reach its potential.

I attended a really useful Arvon residential course where Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay were the tutors. Apart from being a fun week where I met many wonderful writers in the making such as Jo Bell (who currently runs National Poetry Day and whose first collection of poems was Navigation), I learnt how to access my emotions so the poems were not buried under the craftsmanship. I would highly recommend residential courses as they accelerate the developmental side of creative writing.

Arts Organisers such as Geraldine Collinge at Apples and Snakes and Ruth Padel at the South Bank Centre really supported me by arranging tutorials for me and by booking me for key poetry events. I am so fortunate that Geraldine and Ruth have enough vision to single out poets and help nurture them.

Writers need mentors to help them make significant improvements in their writing. The big development in my writing came when I worked with the Stephen Knight (poet, novelist, critic) who has mentored me since I met him in 2002. He made me focus on my craft and helped me develop as a critic of my own work. He encouraged me to send a manuscript to Faber and Faber and most of my success is due to his constructive criticism and his generosity with time.

I am also grateful to the poet Roddy Lumsden who taught me how to say what I really wanted to say in my poems. He helped me get rid of the vague statements that sounded good but were probably pretentious nonsense.

John Stammers runs superb poetry workshops. I attended many sessions that helped me develop an awareness of audience because all too often I knew what I was saying in the poems but sadly no one else around the table found the poems to be clear enough. Especially the poems where I was really trying to be clear!

In recent years I have been fortunate to be supported by Simon Powell (who tragically passed away on 25/10/09). He was a passionate, brilliant and witty man; a visionary who set up Poetry Live (www.poetrylive.net/news.html) where anything from 1000 to 3000 students come to watch poets taught on the GCSE syllabus. Simon and his wonderful poet-artist-filmmaker wife Imtiaz Dharker book me each year for these events and I am truly grateful for their support in ensuring my poetry has a wider audience. Simon’s son Daniel is a chip off the old block – he too is bright and modest. Daniel is usually the MC for the Poetry Live days and he now helps to run the show. Left is a photo of Imtiaz taken by Simon.