Vikki

Hi! I'm Vikki Callaghan, chief editor of The University of Sunderland's The New Creative. I have been on board since the debut edition of The Creative, released November 2006, and am happy to be going strong! My involvement is primarily through my passion for poetry, such as Wallace Stevens who will feature in our next issue, though I love contemporary Irish studies, in particular Marina Carr! Poetry should be fun, and I hope anyone who picks up the magazine will get this from it.

'A poem is an approach toward a truth. But poems can be funny, witty, quirky and sly.' (Kathleen Jamie).

'The culture believes in ghosts, certainly in the country. The banshee was a huge thing. I never saw the banshee, but my best friend in national school, Jacqueline Mitchell, was always trying to terrify me about her. She saw the banshee and her father saw and heard her when his mother died. In the city everything is forgotten now, everything is homogenized, and all of this seems so remote, but to me it's not remote - it's entirely natural. I'm a great believer in the whole angel thing, I don't know what I believe in, but I do believe in something.' (Marina Carr)