ANN DRYSDALE

A talented poet and popular performer. Ann is well known in Wales on the poems-and-pints circuit, and acclaimed more widely in her on-page persona via her publications  The Turn of the Cucumber and Gay Science  ( Peterloo Poets ) Her work is accessible and humorous, with a deceptive simplicity that often catches the reader unawares and touches deeply.  

Ann lives and works in Blaina, Gwent. Since her London childhood she has lived a variety of lives - student, novelist, single parent, water-gipsy, gonzo journalist and hill farmer, not necessarily in that order and some of them more than once. She is widely published in magazines and has won several competitions; she is the current holder of the Dylan Thomas Award for poetry in performance and is not too proud to " slam. "  

She is the author of four published novels: Faint Heart Never Kissed a Pig, Sows Ears and Silk Purses, Pearls before swine ( all  Routledge & Kegan Paul ) and A pig in a passage ( Robert Hale.) 

Ann holds an MA in Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing and has taught at University College Cardiff, in schools and writing centres. She has also been the ' Writer in Residence' at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and is  Welsh Arts Council ' Writers on Tour ' listed.  

                                                         SELF PORTRAIT  

 Why should anyone seek pictures of poets?  

I do not choose to exist in a fixed picture  
Inevitably given the lie to later  
Regretted, superseded, taken down  
Leaving only a clean patch on the wall.  

I should prefer to hang  
Not in your mind's gallery but its concert hall.  
I would rather think of you  
Taking me home with you, busy in your head.  
Playing me daily, gaily in the garden  
Humming me happily about your business.  

What I am is whatever you see when you hear me.  
Whistle me thoughtfully in odd moments -  

Allegro, ma non troppo vivace.  

Find Ann's books here