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Lisa Matthews was born on the evening of June 15 1967, when her mother was getting ready for a night out at the local working men's club, The Fairholme on Condercum Road in the west end of Newcastle. She has lived in Newcastle all her life and while she's toyed with the idea of moving somewhere else, as yet she never has. The youngest of two children, Lisa is proud of her working class roots. The street where she was born was pulled down several years ago and she continues to write about it , so people won't forget it was there. Lisa is a freelance writer, with one book of poetry. "Postcard from a Waterless Lake" (Diamond Twig Press, Oct 2001) published and a novel "Plumb-lines" nearing completion. She is an experienced writer, tutor, lecturer, editor and festival organiser and has a passion for language, both written and spoken. She loves to work with other people, encouraging them to write about their lives, hopes, fear and experiences. Lisa has a Geordie accent and does not pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" ending words. She is proud of her heritage and her North East identity. As a writer she feels it is part of her job to put something back into the city that has given her so much. She plays rhythm guitar in a seven-piece band, loves walking, cooking, geology and popular science, listening to music and talking to people. W.N. Herbert said of her, "Lisa Matthews is an immediate and distinctive poet; her tone can be passionate, witty or dislocating by turns. She draws you effortlessly into very human, very complex atmospheres and moods - a rare skill." She is cofounder of The Blue Room and the proudWORDS Annual Creative Writing Festival. Examples of Lisa's work:
His old Vest
lay in the bedroom section of the rabbit hutch
he made for my sister's birthday.
His old vest was not his at all
but it meant a lot, had seen a lot. It served as a put-up screen
for our plastic projector.
I can see my father pinning it to the wall
in the cupboard under the stairs.
Pinning it softly as if it were the broken
wing of a broken bird. On the front of the vest there was an Evostik stain.
There was a name tag without any name.
There was a hem which would sometimes fray.
There was the smell of all our successes
all of our failures. Every Sunday dinner.
Every second-hand carburettor.
Every lamb bone and paving stone.
Every 'I don't know' and 'ask me later'.
Every clip round the ear stung in the stitches.
Every Provident cheque
left a tidemark higher than the one before. Every debt we ever had stuck in my father's throat
until, eventually, he had no choice but to choke. Other coloured-ness
When I close my eyes, it's all other coloured-ness.
Not like the bottom of our street, that smelled of
demolition and second hand gramophones,
bought with money from govvie-jobs. It's like not wanting to say something,
but the need to lighting me up inside,
like those bonfires made with borrowed wood
from the timberyards where my father
served his time and wasted half his life. Not like the papershop with the grey stone floor
and all the newspapers lined up in rows,
with only the first word of the headlines showing.
The newsagent. His dirty nails. The smell of paraffin
spilled in the road. This was and was not home. | 
