About Matthew
Matthew Stewart was born in Farnham, Surrey, in 1973. Following a comprehensive school education, he took a degree in modern languages at St Peter’s College, Oxford. He has lived in Extremadura, Spain, for the past fifteen years, where he works as the export manager and blender for a local winery. His poems have been widely published in UK magazines and he blogs at Rogue Strands.
Matthew’s website: roguestrands.blogspot.com
• One thing that’s always worth getting out of bed for
A morning without work, without a clock to watch. Breakfast followed by poems. Reading, reading and eventually writing as if suspended in a bubble.
• One thing about myself that often obstructs me
I’m incapable of concentrating for long periods of time, working instead in intense bursts. The brevity of my poetry is probably a reflection of this. I’d love to write longer pieces, but my thought processes are too impatient to let me, needing to drive towards a core as quickly as possible.
• One thing I’ve learned the hard way
A sense of belonging can’t be earned or forced. It depends on the love that surrounds us.
• One thing that gets under my skin
Homogeneous anthologies.
• One thing I’d love to change
The cycle whereby outsiders complain about the establishment before going on to form a new establishment.
• One thing I hope for
The continued strength to find gaps in my frenetic life to read and write poetry.
Well, Matthew, that is a lesson in brevity and concision, one, from which I could happily learn. If you read my ‘six things’ you would surely have fallen back to sleep before I’d even got out of bed!
By the way, I am retired, but still have difficulty making time to read and write poetry..! I’m sure it’s something I’m doing wrong, but beware the lure of retirement, in which I find myself as busy as ever I was when I worked full time! Honestly don’t know how that happened, but when I find out, I’ll let you know…