Lynda O’Neill
 
I was born and brought up in Portsmouth, where some of my poems are based. I live in Winchester with my husband and have two children. I did administrative work in the public sector until my retirement.
 
A lifelong interest in language led me to a creative writing class at an arts centre twelve years ago and I began to be published soon afterwards. A fascination with people’s aspirations and obsessions, lifestyle and popular culture ensures that there are people in most of my poems. Among other things, I have written about relatives, childhood, school and marriage, plus my experience of package holidays and not having had a swinging sixties.
 
I have been placed in competitions judged by Matthew Sweeney, Selima Hill, Carole Satyamurti, Alison Chisholm, U A Fanthorpe and Ian MacMillan. I won first prize in Hampshire County Council’s ‘Words and Walks’ competition in 2009.
 
I have been published in South, Poetry Nottingham International, Iota and The New Writer and was co-judge of South 30. This year I was the profiled poet in South 42. I have had two poems published in an anthology, The Ticking Crocodile, judged by Linda France, and recently five poems published in the anthology This Island City.
 
I am on the committee of Writers in Southampton, a supportive network of published writers who meet for discussions and to hear guest speakers. I am a member of Second Light, the network of women poets.
 

“Some of her poems show her ability to be serious as well as humorous, often by lulling us into a false sense of security and then, as it were, slipping in a thought or conclusion ‘under the radar’ – sometimes with the effect of stopping us in our tracks, forcing us to think seriously, suddenly … and there’s a real relish for the liveliness and the eccentricity of popular culture … enjoy the poems for their fun, their sharp observation of human foibles and human strengths and their love of language as a means of presenting our shared humanity in its richness and strangeness.”

Joan McGavin