Tobias Hill

At school, I was never given a sense that poetry was something flowery or light. It's a complex and controlled way of using language. Rhythms and the music of it are very important. But the difficulty is that poetry makes some kind of claim of honesty.

As a child, l was fascinated by gemstones in the way that small children are fascinated by dinosaurs or trains. Stones seem very physical and look like sweets. You can look at them microscopically and imagine things about them.

My parents brought us up in a very clever way, which was that they saw what we were interested in naturally, and then they encouraged whatever that may be. When I started sharing a keen interest in drama and the theater, instead of steering me away from it, they encouraged me to see plays and think about drama school.