Paul Berry frequently draws upon landscapes and the natural world to inspire and influence his poetry, evoking varied places and settings. It is a multi-layered approach, highlighting locations, their histories and the people who live there or pass through, allowing him to celebrate the often extraordinary nature of the seemingly ordinary and everyday, while bringing new perspectives to familiar places.
Norfolk born and bred, Berry began his writing career in the 1970s, going on to work as a local newspaper reporter, before training in Northampton to become a teacher and later working for a social services department and an NHS substance misuse agency. Author of seven collections, a social history about life on and around airfields in World War 2 and compiler of the Norfolk volume in the Poet's England series, he lives near King's Lynn where he has run Centre Poets literature group since 1976. Aside from poetry, he is a trustee of the Robert Foot Leukaemia Fund and a volunteer at Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, where he is also a member of the Council of Governors.
Towards Babingley opens with poems inspired by the environs of a ruined medieval church bordering the Royal estate at Sandringham in West Norfolk, before he journeys out to settings as varied as East London, the East Midlands and the Lake District, inspired by events as diverse as a funeral, blackberry picking and a heritage steam train trip. A number of poems use urban settings to celebrate former relationships, highlighting a growing reputation as a chronicler of love, loss and longing.
What Leaves May Know begins with poems set in his ancestral heartlands of North Norfolk, reflecting life in isolated rural villages at the close of the twentieth century. There are poems celebrating family life - Berry is father of two sons - and his children growing up, alongside threads from his own childhood. Also included are poems inspired by former loves, with others triggered by his 'day jobs', across settings including the Fens, North Wales and Northumberland.
