Have you ever moved to live in another country or town?  Or felt that your family’s customs are out of step with other people around you?  Identity and belonging are the themes of two autobiographical pieces in New Writing 12.

In ‘Where Do We Live?’ Ian Sansom describes his move to the ‘typical decayed seaside town’ near Belfast in Northern Ireland where he and his wife have decided to bring up their children.
‘It’s a place that is good of its kind, but that no one would want to visit, and sensitive teenagers long to leave, or at least to write graffiti on. The kind of place you might like to start from or end up in, but where you wouldn’t necessarily imagine yourself spending the years in between...’

It is by supporting the local strong-man hero on television that his children cement their sense of belonging in this new home.

British-born Nigerian poet Patience Agbabi confronts issues of colour and upbringing in a sonnet called ‘Seeing Red’.  In our New Writing 12 interview, Patience Agbabi talks about the childhood experience that inspired the poem and gave her an opportunity to focus on colour.

‘Sometimes white people want to see you as a human being and so colour isn’t an issue, but actually you also want them to realise colour is an issue and there are different experiences you have to encounter from being black.’

The texts will be available online until 1 March 2005. The accompanying teachers' pages, readers' notes, author interview and glossaries will remain on the site.

Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi is a British-born Nigerian poet, who has performed her work all over the world. Her publications are R.A.W. (Gecko Press, 1995) and Transformatrix (Payback Press, 2000). She lectures in creative writing at the University of Greenwich and the University of Cardiff. She is currently working on her third collection, Body Language, which is due out in 2005.

Author photo: © British Council

Ian Sansom

Ian Sansom lives in Northern Ireland. His book The Truth about Babies (2002) is published by Granta. His novel Ring Road is published by Fourth Estate (2004).

Author photo: S.Lovell

'I am what I am' illustration © Maurizio Marmorato