Poetry was closer to me than family. My poems are photographs. And with two books under my belt at twenty-one they felt a point of record. There was nothing else that could bridge the emotional and physical stories other than poetry. My poems are my family. Sometimes when I perform or publish them it is like I’ve released them to scrutiny. It irritates me that anyone would criticise them. They are not perfect. They never pretended to be. They’re my family. They are at different stages of development. And that’s okay.

In the early 1990s I moved to Bloodaxe Books. I needed to move from my beloved Bogle L’Ouverture and Bloodaxe accepted me in 1992. I was twenty-five. I’d been out of the institutions for seven years, published for four. Bloodaxe published my book Rebel Without Applause. It sold out. What they didn’t tell me was that they had no intention of reprinting. It would be eight years before I published another book. There was no Jessica and Eric to talk to. And Bloodaxe wouldn’t return my calls. I had no idea why.

‘They separated from me and pointed their fingers at me and shouted, “Are you integrating or separating or what?”’

Regardless, I spent the next eight years writing and performing, making radio documentaries and writing plays. Occasionally I would contact Bloodaxe to ask when they would reprint. I was contracted to them. They did nothing. I continued searching for my family. In 1995, in a BBC documentary called Internal Flight, I found my father and brothers and sisters. I also confirmed the childhood abuse I had suffered whilst in the institutions. Slowly the jigsaw was coming together. Time Out reviewed the documentary: ‘Will this man not do anything for publicity?’ it read. No book release from my publishers. Not a whisper.

Crazy as it sounds, on some level I believed I deserved to be treated this way. It was like being quietly beaten up in the corner of a busy room, by the person who invited me to the party, whilst also being accused of gatecrashing. Make of this what you will. It happened and it must be said. Seventeen years later I received an apology of sorts from Neil Astley of Bloodaxe, for it was he. The apology accompanied a request that I change some detail about him on my website. Something that had always bothered him.

‘It’s not difficult to be successful in poetry but as a successful poet it is.’