The Impediment to My Success

Emma Anna Marie Clarke has written poetry from the age of 12, she started when her teacher was stuck for lesson ideas on rainy Friday afternoons.

Her first poem was about a mouse called Freddy! Later English teachers, specifically a Mrs Huggett, encouraged writing poetry too, and so by the age of 17, she began to write poems for herself to vent emotions, creating her first grown-up poem called Mr and Mrs Personality.

Then after marriage at age of 26, she stopped writing, maybe because she was happy! 15 years later, and a widow, she produced a collection of poems called The Impediment to my Success.