I'd been a writer for twenty years but hadn't written poetry since Sr Mary at my convent school rapped my knuckles - literally, with a ruler - for putting a 'bad' word in my epic effort about a doomed love affair between a highwayman and his barmaid sweetheart. Then, in my forties a dear childhood friend died and serious illness came into my own life. And suddenly, without intending it, the poems too arrived.