Welcome to my poetry website. I am an ex-journalist and BBC TV producer, turned poet and novelist.

Years when bookshops are closed are not the best for a writer, but it was busy for me. My sixth collection, everlove was published in April 2021 by The London Magazine Editions and my novel The Prisoner’s Wife  was published by Penguin Random House imprints  across the world in 2020, under my maiden name Maggie Brookes. Luckily, the bookshops were open again by the time my second novel Acts of Love and War was published in 2023.

My poetry appears widely in international magazines and anthologies, and has escaped the page into a mobile phone app, choreography, BBC Radio 4, readings and festivals. I have judged international poetry competitions for Ver poets, Torriano, Barnet, Ware poets and Segora.

This is how it all happened: first my pamphlet Quintana Roo was published by Acumen Publications in 2003 and then my first full collection, Lipstick, was published in 2007 by Greenwich Exchange. In 2010 a collection of  pocket-sized poems, petite, was published by Hearing Eye and in 2011, Oversteps Books published Ally Pally Prison Camp, the story of 3,000 civilians imprisoned at Alexandra Palace during the First World War told through a historical collage of poems, photos, paintings and extracts from memoirs and letters.

Sancti Clandestini – Undercover Saints, the fully illustrated poetry collection was published in 2012 by Ward-Wood Publishing. An exhibition to accompany the book was held at The Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden. My fifth collection of poetry Degrees of Twilight was published by The London Magazine in July 2015,

I returned to my first love of poetry after a career spanning many other forms of writing. After an English degree at Cardiff University I became a newspaper reporter, moving to BBC TV as a documentary writer / producer / director.

I was Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education from 2007 to 2012 and  founding  Principal Editor of its peer reviewed journal Writing in Practice. In 2007 my edited collection of essays: Story The Heart of the Matter was published by Greenwich Exchange.

I have a PhD in creative writing from Cardiff University and was a University Teaching Fellow and University Orator at Middlesex University, where I taught Creative Writing for 30 years. I have been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and Advisory Fellow.

I  live in North London and Whitstable with my husband. We have two grown-up daughters.