Ulster Tatler Book Of The Month: July 2011
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Belfast Telegraph Weekend Magazine: 1 Jan 2011
Verbal Magazine No 34: Dec 2010
Gloucester Citizen: 7 Dec 2010
Verbal Magazine
Issue 34: December 2010
From Banbridge to the Brontes...
The beautiful Bronte Homeland countryside has helped inspire the debut poetry collection from emerging talent Paul Jeffcutt.
Latch is a collection of carefully crafted and passionate poems that features critical moments in his and others’ lives.
Paul has devoted his time to perfecting his extensive repertoire having left full-time employment as a university professor in 2008 to concentrate on his writing.
He started to write poems in his spare time ten years ago after rekindling an interest in poetry that had lain dormant for decades. He eventually attended an evening class in creative writing at the Crescent Arts Centre and subsequently joined the Writer's Group at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in Belfast.
Paul’s first poem was published in 2003 and in 2006 he achieved recognition from Poetry Ireland as an emerging writer of 'real talent'.
“There’s a tremendous valuation of poetry and literary prose in Northern Ireland that’s extremely encouraging for poets and writers. My experience of living and working here has been crucial, it's helped shape and form my poetry and my development as a writer” said Paul.
“I grew up in a hamlet near the border between England and Wales and the beautiful County Down countryside just outside Banbridge where I live now, right in the middle of the Bronte Homeland, undoubtedly inspires my poetry.”
“The poems in Latch aren’t explicitly about life in Northern Ireland as they range across different countries and time periods and subjects, from employment and family to prison camps and sex tourism. But because the local countryside so evokes the geography of my childhood, this region has had a powerful impact on my writing.”
Paul was mentored in the early stages of putting Latch together by another Lagan Press poet, Moyra Donaldson, as he had won an Arts Council of Northern Ireland ‘manuscript to publication’ development award.
“Moyra was an immense help and made the task of choosing the right poems for Latch more effective and I’m also greatly indebted to my fellow members of the Writers’ Group of the Heaney Centre for their feedback and support over the years.”