A blind poet living in south east Wales

I love knowing that the words I’ve written
the lines of poetry
the flow of the words
the colours I’ve known and imagined
the dances I’ve danced
are the words and lines and colours and dances
that I will still love
even when I cannot
remember
who has written them.

Giles L. Turnbull grew up a northerner, living in Harrogate until becoming an honorary Welshman after moving to Swansea University to study chemistry.

He owned his first poetry book at the age of 7 or 8 years old, when a 2 inch tall and 1 inch wide, tartan-covered copy of Sir Walter Scott’s verse novel, ‘The Lord of the Isles’ was sold to him at his junior school jumble sale for the princely sum of 2p; it looked like a spell book. The poetic content remains a favourite work to this day.

Studying A-Level English Lang and Lit he encountered the poetry of Thomas Hardy, who was the first significant influence on his poetry style. At the same time, a cast-off slim student-annotated paperback volume of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ became another formative influence. His early poems reflected a deep despair at the beauty and the cruelty of life, and the trials and tribulations of love, from the bleeding edge of teenage life.

He is a regular participant in creative writing and poetry groups, including those run by poet and playwright Mair De-Gare Pitt at the Power Station Centre in Cwmbran, south Wales, and online with poet Kevin Higgins in the Over The Edge series in Galway, Republic of Ireland.

He was shortlisted in the 2015/16 Cinnamon Press single poem prize, and his poetry has been published in, or is forthcoming from Rockland and Fair Acre Press.