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Hadleigh Nub News delves into the life of former Hadleigh resident, poet Pauline Stainer.

Pauline Stainer was born Pauline Anita Rogers in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent on March 5 1941.

A key theme of her poetry is the exploration of the imaginative mind. This is possibly due to her childhood growing up in the industrial Stoke-on-Trent.

Pauline's first poetry volume

After attending St. Anne's College, Oxford and completing her BA degree in English, she moved to Essex where she raised her four children.

She later went on to complete a Master of Philosophy degree at the University of Southhampton in 1967.

In 1987, she won a Hawthornden Fellowship before coming into public prominence with her first poetry volume two years later, called "The Honeycomb."

Her fourth collection, "The Wound-Dresser's Dream" was nominated and shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award.

Further awards come in the form of the King's Lynn Award for Merit in Poetry in 2000, and the Cholmondeley Award in 2009.

The visual imagery used in her poetry is reminiscent to that of Anglo-Saxon riddles, a perfect combination with Hadleigh considering the area's history.

She lived in Hadleigh up until late 2017, where she moved back to Essex.

Here is one of Pauline's famous poems, "After the Ark:"

It's not told

how the animals left,

but waiting to disembark

their breath formed a cloud

and fell as light rain.

It gathered in hollows

under their eyes,

the peaceable kingdom

laid down, like memory

in a library of water

and long after landing

they would watch

for the waterspouts

and that mysterious fall

of fish from the air.