ABOUT
MOIRA ANDREW
I've always wanted to write. My teenage diary reads, I’d love to write a book. I’d create a world of my own and have power over all my characters.
I was born and educated in Scotland. I became a primary teacher, married, had two daughters and was so busy just keeping things going at home and at school, that there was little time to try my hand at writing. I divorced, became a lecturer in Craigie College of Education in Ayr and began writing poetry, enjoying making words work for me.
My next job was as head of a primary school near Bristol and it was there that I started to write for children. After all, it’s hardly fair to ask children to write a poem if you’re not prepared to put your own words and ideas on the line. And believe me, primary children are the sternest of critics!
When I remarried, I moved to Wales, left full-time teaching and started a new career as a freelance writer. I’m lucky to be able to combine my teaching experience and interest in artwork and display with my love of writing. I have a number of books in publication, mostly those intended for use by primary school teachers. My first and possibly most successful is Language in Colour, published by Belair Publications Ltd. although my personal favourite is Paint a Poem, also from Belair.
After my lovely husband Allen died in 2003, I moved to Cornwall where I lived for ten years with my cat Bonnie. Although I visited fewer schools, I worked in the schoolroom of the RCH Hospital (Treliske) in Truro where the pupils were patients. This was an exciting and thoroughly worthwhile project – one that I now miss.
In 2005 I joined the prestigious Falmouth Poetry Group. The standard of my poetry came on by leaps and bounds and I made many friends among the members. I also set up the Cornish Chapter of the Society of Authors. I had two poetry collections published during my time in Cornwall, This Year, Next Year, and Firebird (IDP)
In 2013 I moved to Nunney, a village near Frome to live with Norman, a teaching colleague from the 80s – before I met Allen! We spend part of the year in Norman’s house in Cyprus, enjoy jazz, (Norman has his own band: The New Academic Feetwarmers). I’m now a member of the Frome Writers’ Collective and I’ve set up a new poetry-writing group. Of course, I continue to write! Poets don’t give up easily! My current publishers are Poetry Space, Wish a Wish and Indigo Dreams Publishing, Man in the Moon.
