Richard Westcott

I’m now retired from a fulfilled lifetime of NHS doctoring, with no longer any excuse for not writing poetry.

I still live where I worked – why move, when it’s North Devon, near the sea, on the edge of Exmoor? – a wonderfully varied landscape I know and enjoy. It’s where my family and I are now rooted, with some trees, wildness and bees of our own.

Pleasantly surprised to meet with some success, I’ve been commended and placed in various competitions including the Hippocrates, YorkMix and the Plough, even winning the Poetry Society Stanza competition.

My poems have appeared in all sorts of places such as buses, a university wall and the Pitt Rivers Museum, as well as books and magazines.  A well-received pamphlet There they live much longer was published by Indigo Dreams and I recently completed (survived) a residency at a crematorium, which has produced an unusual sequence of poems.

But I’m happy to say I’m not as serious as all this sounds.

With a big family, many interests (including performing a wide variety of music) and a Jack Russell called Tim, time still has to be carved out for writing – but a regular blog helps.