The Background to Something In Nothing

This collection has been many years in the writing. This is partly due to the sensitivity of its inspiration.

When I was about 11 years old, I joined a poetry group at the Children’s Arts Centre, Cheltenham. A leading light of the group was a young poet, about 7 years older than me, called Lucy Partington. In 1973 Lucy disappeared on her way home. We talked about her a lot over the years that followed. When I was 15, I went on holiday to Greece and shared a room with Lucy’s mother, Margaret. That experience was the inspiration for the poem Lost Daughter in my first collection Owl Unbound.

It seemed at the time that there was a culture of denial in the Police, media and society more widely. We on the other hand were convinced that Lucy had been murdered, and that there was a serial killer operating in Gloucestershire. When in 1994 the Police at last started to excavate Fred West’s home in Cromwell Street, Gloucester, I turned to my husband and said, “Lucy’s there.” And she was.

Looking back I realise how much the sense of a threat of evil impacted on my view of the world and my poetry. Two of my other friends at the Arts Centre were followed by a man on their way home from school. Something in Nothing is partly my way of processing what happened.

But it is important to be clear that it is not specifically about Lucy or Fred West nor is it just about serial killers or male on female violence. It is about the wider issue of denial of evil – the “something in nothing” of the title. It is sadly as relevant now as it was then. Genocide is being denied now, as it has been throughout history. People who should know better excuse violence or look the other way.