成人快手

"With me it very often starts with one line," explains Greta Stoddart, talking about the inspiration for her poetry - the second collection of which has just garnered her a nomination for the prestigious Costa Book Awards 2008.

"You're walking along then you suddenly get a line in your head and you scribble it down.

"I've left lines in my notebook for years sometimes and if I go back to them and they still have that intrigue about them, that hook, that promise, then I go back and see where that line takes me."

The plant Salvation Jane appears on the cover

Greta, who lives near Axminster and teaches at Bath Spa University and for the Poetry School in Exeter, was born in 1966 and won the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize with her first book of poems.

The spark for this second collection was her research about the purple thistle-like weed flower Salvation Jane, also known as Paterson's Curse.

"I came across the word 'salvific' in a novel and looking the word up came across this: 'Salvation Jane = Paterson's Curse'.

"I was intrigued that one thing could have two such contradictory names and so began days of research into this little purple weed that then became a poem and then the title of the collection.

"This plant is good for bee keepers but farmers hate it听 - I don't know of any other plant that has two such paradoxical names."

And she is thrilled to have made the shortlist along with For All We Know by Ciaran Carson; The Broken Word by Adam Foulds and Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds.

"To get the nomination is like having a spotlight shining on my books, and the others that are shortlisted.

"It's just pushing the book a bit further and getting new readers and hopefully widening the circle of readers I already have."

The Costa judging panel - made up of Rachel Campbell-Johnston; Roger McGough and Robyn Marsack - described her second collection of poems as "honest, observant poems from a collection which is both wonderfully unsettling and deeply life-affirming".

Salvation Jane sold out at Waterstone's in Exeter within a fortnight of its publication in October 2008 and a further batch of signed copies is now in stock.

"It's our best-selling poetry book of the year," said Mike Paine, the store's poetry buyer.

Greta doesn't have a favourite of the 39 poems in the collection but You Drew Breath - which is about childbirth - is the one she enjoys reading in public the most.

"I am very fond of it and just get carried away with it at readings. But there is an elegy in there which means a lot to me as it is about the death of someone I was close to.

Greta is thrilled about the nomination.

"Each poem is different and I like them all for different reasons."

Her love of poetry has its roots in her childhood and Greta says her mother recalls her having a notebook by her bed from the age of about eight so she could record whatever thoughts came to her in the night.

"Then in adolescence I would write these heart-rending, heartbroken poems and then I went into acting."

But despite training in Paris to be a mime artist and working as a performer she eventually decided to return to poetry - a move which she says has brought her much happiness.

"I went from being a young wordsmith and went to Paris to train as a mime artist before finding my way back into writing in my late 20s.

"Now I'm thoroughly profoundly happy as a poet in a way possibly I wasn't as an actress. It's always been poetry - I don't know why. It's just been there from a very early age."

Greta moved from Peckham to Devon with her family a year ago but says she is not sure that the change of location will affect her poetry.

"I think inspiration is much less obvious than that, much more mysterious.听

"It's a whole range of things. Very few poets have one subject - it's a mixture.

"It's often a very random series of events which you, as a poet, make connections between."

The final judging between the four shortlisted poets will take place in early January 2009 and an overall winner from all categories of books will be announced at the end of that month.

Salvation Jane is published by Anvil Press at 拢7.95.

* Listen to Greta Stoddart talking to 成人快手 Radio Devon's Richard Green using the audio links on this page.