Profile - Kathleen Jamie

I began writing when I was still at school. It seemed that there was a big wide world out there but all that was on offer to me, a very ordinary kid in a very ordinary comprehensive school, seemed cruelly small. I wasn't considered 'university material', didn't do well in my Highers, and left school frightened that I would have to spend my life cooped up in an office or a shop. Writing was a liberation and an exploration.

I found my way to a writers' group in Edinburgh - I'd encourage any novice writer to find a group, at least for a wee while. I worked hard at my writing and with encouragement, soon had some poems published in small magazines.

It went from there. After a couple of years I re-sat the wretched exams, got into University and studied Philosophy. I kept writing poetry, published a book, then another. Why poetry? I don't know. It was the right thing at the time. I liked the close engagement with language. More recently I've turned to prose, non-fiction. I like writing for radio, again because of its concentration on sound, no images.

Writing is a strange thing, fickle. It comes, it goes. It's possible, even for a so-called 'professional' writer, to go two or three years without writing anything, and those are difficult times. You can't force it. People say writing is about 'finding a voice' or 'making yourself heard'. Not true. It's about listening.

Kathleen Jamie