Spotlight On Writers
Mark Woodward
- Where do you originate from?
The medieval, historic market town of Tewkesbury, famous for its Abbey, and ‘Bloody Meadow’ battle site from the ‘Wars of the Roses.’
Gloucestershire, England, UK.
I’m the fully grown (though some may dispute this) version of a 9-year-old underachiever. A below-average junior school child whose headteacher once brashly told my parents, “He’s destined to never make anything of himself”?
I embarked on this journey from the depths of self-doubt, dismissed by the antiquated educational system of the early 1970s, essentially designated as the “nobody” within the classroom. The dream of becoming a rock star (with Ozzy Osbourne as my personal idol), an action movie hero, or even a politician achieving the remarkable feat of penning scandalous, best-selling memoirs from the confines of a prison cell felt like distant fantasies.
My childhood dreams revolved around becoming a chef in the Royal Navy, but it turned out my stomach had other plans. You see, I discovered I got seasick on stairs – not the best trait for a sailor! Fate, with its quirky sense of humour, took me in a different direction, introducing me to a grumpy and seemingly unapproachable police sergeant at a school careers evening. But hey, his grumpiness didn’t derail my enthusiasm, and before you know it, I was on the path to becoming a lifelong crimefighter.
I even reached the heights of being a specialist firearms officer, trained by the SAS as a close protection bodyguard to Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Princes William and Harry.
So, I’m just your regular “nobody” who, through extensive specialist training and knowledge in chemicals acquired from institutions such as ICI Middlesbrough, the National Chemical Emergency Centre, Fire Service College, the Health & Safety Executive, and Home Office College in Easingwold, found myself appointed as a Tactical Advisor to Gold Command during a major chemical waste factory inferno. It’s quite astonishing how a ‘nobody’ like me ended up as a guest lecturer on Emergency Response to Chemical Disasters at prestigious institutions such as Cardiff University, Cranfield University, and the Royal College of Military Science, as well as having the honour of addressing a World Health Organisation Conference.
- What do you cherish most about the place you call home?
What I cherish most about the place I call home has very little to do with bricks, mortar, or a postcode. Home is the people. It is my wife, my children, and my grandchildren; the friends who have walked alongside me through triumphs, mistakes, laughter, and loss. These are the people with whom I have made history, shared memories, and conducted the serious business of living. Home lives in those connections, not in the building that shelters them.
- What ignites your creativity?
My creativity is ignited by people, events, and circumstances, by small words and throwaway conversations, and by my connection with the earth while out walking, living, breathing, and paying attention. It is fuelled by lived experience. In early 2025, I went to my GP believing I had a sports injury, only to be told I had aggressive, advanced, incurable, terminal, metastasised prostate cancer, with three to six months to live unless I chose brutal chemotherapy and clinical trial medication. In that moment, I decided how I would cope: by enjoying every moment I am given. Writing became my therapy, my survival tool, and my way of making sense of what is happening. Through words, I process fear, gratitude, defiance, and hope, and I know this lived experience resonates with far too many other cancer commandos.
- Do you have a favorite word and could you incorporate it into a poetic phrase?
My word is Empathy.
“Empathy is the fire we feel in another’s silence, the compass we follow when words fail, the tether that keeps us human.”
Through a career in policing, I spent years standing in the explosive aftermath of crime scenes and at serious, life-changing road traffic collisions. I stood among shock, disbelief, awe, and sometimes uncontrollable wailing. These are moments that stay with you. You are present with people on what is often the worst day of their lives, when words fail and emotion fills every available space. Later, as a funeral director, I worked daily with grief and loss, guiding families through moments they never imagined they would face.
From those experiences, I learned to appreciate the sheer volume and power of emotional intelligence. That is empathy — attunement. It is not something that can be easily taught or casually displayed. I see it as a gift from Heaven, because not everyone possesses it. I rejoice when I see it naturally present in young children, before life teaches them to suppress it. And I have no doubt that participants, readers, and reviewers of Spillwords — people who value poetry and prose — hold this gift in abundance, because they recognise it, feel it, and live it.
- What is your pet peeve?
I don’t have any pet peeves. Truly. Though as a terminal cancer patient, I could list a hundred things that might trigger irritation, frustration, or emotional flare-ups. One of my constant companions in this fight — surviving, living, making the most of every hour I am given — are hormone injections. They bring hot flushes, unpredictability, and sometimes, yes, a flare of anger at the smallest of things: someone taking too long to cross the road, a delay that would once have barely registered.
But I don’t allow those moments to become grievances. Every second I have left, every breath I take, is too precious to squander on irritation or resentment. My oncologist told me, plainly: “Mark, this cancer is going to kill you, take your life.” It was the clearest, most striking reminder of mortality, and it forced me to understand something essential — life, even under threat, is overwhelmingly magical. I have never enjoyed myself more. I am dying, but I feel fully, brilliantly alive.
So no, I have no pet peeves. Every moment, every glance, every laugh, every conversation with family and friends is devoted to living, making memories, and treasuring the gift I have been given. Even the flushes, the hormonal rage, the inconvenient interruptions of daily life, become part of this extraordinary, unrepeatable, miraculous experience of being alive.
- How would you describe the essence of Mark Woodward?
I am, at heart, an encourager. A provocateur of thought, a challenger of the so-called “rules” of poetry and life, and someone who refuses to bow to the idea that experience can be tamed by metre, rhyme, or tradition. My poetry began as therapy, a lifeline, a way of wrestling with my own thoughts and fears, and it has grown from that intimate struggle into a declaration: lived experience matters, and it will not be silenced.
I am a man who has faced mortality head-on, diagnosed with a disease that should have ended me in months, yet here I stand, fully present, alive, and fiercely engaged. That battle gives legitimacy, strength, and pure fire to everything I write. I live the blues — not the polite, toe-tapping sort, but the enduring music that carries decades of heartbreak, joy, struggle, and triumph — and I channel that into words, because experience is the truest teacher.
I delight in overturning statistics, questioning convention, and laughing in the face of those who feel intimidated by life’s messiness. I am unapologetic about the emotions I feel, the stories I tell, and the truths I carry. I seek connection, challenge, and insight. I write to encourage, to provoke thought, to open eyes to the extraordinary in the ordinary.
And, of course, I am human: loving my family, cherishing friends, celebrating small wonders, and making sure every moment counts. I am someone who takes joy in making history with the people around me, whether through laughter, shared memory, or the quiet miracle of being alive when the odds say you shouldn’t be.
In short: I am a survivor, a witness, a poet, a provocateur, and an instigator of living fully — a man unafraid to rewrite the rules, live loud, and leave a mark that is unmistakably, undeniably, human.
That spirit lives on beyond this page in my books, The Boy Who Built A Rocket and Bins & Biopsies, now published and available on Kindle.
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