A POET from Kidderminster looks set to go far after publishing her first book of verse, Beyond Calling Distance.

Esther Morgan, 31, who teaches at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, said: "A lot of the poems in the book are concerned with the distance between people and the distance between things in the landscape."

The collection, published by Bloodaxe Books, was inspired both by the landscape of her early years, at Wilden, where her parents still live, and Norfolk.

"One poem is called The Magpie," she says, "It is about the bird and the fact that poets steal things. We are always on the lookout for interesting anecdotes."

Her interest in poetry dates back to her schooldays at The Knoll, Manor Way, Kidderminster, and Alice Ottley School, Worcester. But she says A-levels and her degree at Newnham College, Cambridge, "squeezed out" the creative urge in the interim.

Her decision to train as a volunteer at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, Cumbria, was both an admission of "cluelessness" about what to do next and a search for space in which to write. It was there she came under the influence of Gerard Benson, founder of Poems on the Underground and then poet in residence.

Her duties there included showing visitors around Wordsworth's cottage, hosting education days and "spouting poetry at the top of fells with the rain lashing down."

After 18 months at the trust she left to work as a fundraiser for the annual Cheltenham Literary Festival for two years before taking an MA in creative writing at UEA. Run at that time by the current Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, the course has also fostered such literary talents as award winning authors Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.

She has taught on the university's undergraduate creative writing course and edited the UEA poetry anthology, Reactions. In 1998 she won an Eric Gregory Award, a grant given to only seven up and coming poets a year.

Of the book's publication she says: "It's quite exciting, but quite nerve wracking. It's a sort of full stop. I have to start again and hopefully find other things to write about."

Beyond Calling Distance, priced £7.95, is available from Fagins Bookshop, Kidderminster.