Valentine, Ruth 1945–

PERSONAL:

Born August 30, 1945, in Shoreham, Sussex, England. Ethnicity: "White British." Politics: "Socialist, feminist."

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. E-mail—poet@ruthvalentine.co.uk.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

Talking about the Welfare State, Wayland Publishers (Hove, England), 1980.

Self-Help in the News (nonfiction), Wayland Publishers (Hove, England), 1983.

The Identification of Species (poetry), Slow Dancer Press (Nottingham, England), 1991, revised edition, 1992.

In Cathar Country (poetry), illustrated by Garry Kennard, Editions La Serre (Aude, France), 1995.

The Lover in Time of War (poetry), Scratch (Stocktonon-Tees, England), 1995.

Asylum, Hospital, Haven: A History of Horton Hospital, Riverside Mental Health Trust (London, England), 1996.

The Tide Table (poetry), Slow Dancer Press (London, England), 1998.

Work represented in anthologies, including London, City of Disappearances, edited by Iain Sinclair, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ruth Valentine once told CA: "I write for the pleasure of manipulating the language, to explore and transcend individual experience, to make people sit and listen, at last. I live and work in an intensely political environment, and the interrelation of politics and private experience I find compelling. Finding the little door into good writing, for me, is extraordinarily difficult; I am always mislaying the key, or rushing past promising to come back, or polishing the letter-box instead. I hope my writing is getting more pared down at present, but I may equally decide against that aesthetic any day now. I am influenced by poets and novelists who write with music and sensuousness and passion, and anyone who catches my breath with an image: Walcott, Milosz, Virginia Woolf, Ondaatje, Hikmet, Neruda, plus Donne, Herbert, Keats."