​What Am I Looking For?
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Marion Oxley was born in Manchester and brought up in Salford, an essential distinction if you're from either of these places! She's worked in a variety of paid and voluntary jobs and is a single parent. She defected to the Calder Valley twenty five years ago and is happily ensconced as a human companion to boisterous, staffie Alice. She has a BA(Hons)me, not the dog! Her pamphlet In the Taxidermist's House was published by 4Word Press in 2021. Her poems have been widely published and she was a Forward Prize Best Single Poem nominee for her long poem The Boys, The Monk and The Sleeping Princess. She's currently working on a collection. What am I looking for? Well, that's the million dollar question, if we all knew the answer to that, we'd be winning prizes right, left and centre! What I do know is that I admire poems that tell me something I don't already know, that take me to places I haven't already been. That grab my attention and won't let me go until I've explored every nook and cranny of them. Poems that make me think, challenge preconceptions, that widen the readers' horizons. That have an emotional resonance beyond the words on the page. That have an authority, a confidence, are fresh, original and uniquely have that indefinable thing you instantly recognise as the real deal and it will be a tremendous honour and privilege to read every single one of them.