Can you inherit hiraeth? It’s a Welsh word which doesn’t translate exactly in English but means something like a longing for home, for the land where you were born. My father brought my mother and me to live in Wales just five years before he died.
After school I moved back to England and lived in Sussex, then Devon, Cornwall, Wiltshire and Somerset working in local journalism, stand-up comedy, PR and for a conservation charity.
I have always been drawn westward and yet, before moving to the Clun valley 20 years ago, I never felt completely at home.
Maybe the Shropshire borderland satisfies a personal hiraeth.
I am often asked about my name. Thirza is after one of my father’s sisters. She appears in some of my poems and is one of the aunts who came armed with Welsh cakes. In the Old Testament a Thirza and her sisters were the first women to be recorded as inheriting their father’s property instead of being passed over for male relatives. My mother was born in Chatham and her maiden name, Clout, is from Kent.
My poetry apprenticeship
- Membership of Border Poets collective
- an MA/MFA in Creative Writing, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Wenlock Poetry Festival, as chair, where I heard so many brilliant poets
- a week at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast
- a Masterclass led by the wonderful Gillian Clarke at Ty Newydd, the Welsh writing centre
- a weekend at Ty Newydd with Imtiaz Dharker and Moniza Alvi
- Three Arvon poetry workshop retreats
- online workshops led by Ann and Peter Sansom, publishers of The North and the Smith|Doorstop imprint.
Other interests
Cooking and gardening are great supports for writing – when a poem just will not work, making a lemon cake or digging up some ground elder makes me feel better. It also lets the poem carry on baking or growing until it is ready.
When cooking, I try to bring out the best in a few ingredients, learning from books by Marcella Hazan and Rachel Roddy, cooking for myself and other people.
Growing vegetables is another interest, although I am an un-constant gardener. Last year I only remembered I should have netted the purple sprouting broccoli when I saw their leaves had been eaten into lace by an army of hungry caterpillars.
Sadly I’m without a dog at the moment, but I still enjoy walking with Jaffa, a friend’s lively young Labrador. Jaffa is good friends with my three black cats who sometimes walk through the fields with us.
Thirza Clout 
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