Shirley Cawte

Poet

"I've always loved the way words can dance. How it can sway an emotion and perspective.

They say a picture paints a 1000 words – but nothing is as powerful as your own imagination. How many of us have said the film wasn’t as good as the book. Reading is like unveiling a world and seeing it with your own spectacular technicolour glasses on! You imagine the characters.... walk though their lives hand in hand.

A good writer tells a story. A great one takes your hand and leads you though it, you can feel each heartbeat of a character and see through their eyes.

Writing is an art as much as painting and music.... it can comfort and hold you or allow you to share a perspective you never considered or had the time to cherish.

After all, not many of us notice the dancing bag in the tree or how the blossom falls life confetti in the wind.

This is about living in the moment. Feeling the world around us and seeing its beauty and sometimes the pain. Not accepting “normalisation” or becoming oblivious to the world we live in.

But you have to be open, to want to see, to share, and I do.

There are highs and lows of reality, but we grow from each rollercoaster ride we find ourselves on and we should celebrate that. The moment we stop growing and learning, from understanding and seeing other perspectives is the moment we start to fade and lose the beauty change can bring.

I am always developing my craft. I've been encouraged by wonderful people …. especially my father, who not long ago passed away. He was always encouraging me to share the gift he believed I have

I've been writing since I was 14, sometimes regularly - some years I've not written at all. This truly is a work of years of passions and pains. All of which I want to share with you."