I recently opened a box that had been moving between lofts, and found myself a present, a book of poetry written down from 1993 to 1995, a flowery hardback book with fountain-pen entries, signed just in case. Now, at the East Midlands Writers’ Conference they told us to put our writing in a box and leave it for a while, but I guess over 20 years is extreme. But for me, it’s more like having access to a time capsule.

Some of these poems went on to be aired in university and successively updated. Some start as free verse and end up rhyming. I can date some of my experiences. The tone of the poems changes after a few months of university.

I was lucky to do a BA (hons) in English Literature and creative writing on a course that gave the eight or nine on it special access to writers. We had support from visiting writers and later on a writing mentor, and in the second year we started taking the courses that would make up our subsidiary. I still have the poems I wrote for Hugo Williams in Autumn 1997.

In case you’re not familiar with Hugo Williams’s poetry, he wrote ‘Toilet’ and ‘Creative Writing’. Look them up! And here, with time for reflection, is a poem influenced by ‘Toilet’.

Train Ride

I’m doing it standing up

On a seatlessly silent train

I’m riding fast, the day is vast

I’m playing my favourite game.

I’m going away from here

As the throbs and pulses grow

The world files by, a restless lie

I’m caught in accelerando.

The train is as fragile as light

The cheap soap opera set quakes

Then faster it fits as if nothing exists

But the grey walls, toilet door

Black fridge-sealant rubber

Holding the train together

We slow down and stop, a useless flop

And I’m elsewhere for ever and ever.

© Rebecca Deans 2016