12:30pm Saturday 6th March 2010
By Emma Streatfield
A WOMAN who gained her English GCSE aged 43 in Swindon is returning to the town to launch her new poetry collection.
Jan Hedger was doing medical support work at the old Swindon College when she was inspired to go back to education herself.
This led her to develop her skill as a poet and now she wants to give something back to the town.
She is launching her second book of poems – On Calico Wings – at the Swindon Arts Centre, in Devizes Road, on Saturday, March 13, between noon and 2pm.
Jan, 52, who lives in Bexhill, East Sussex, said: “It’s giving back and that’s important. People can pass through a town, it can give them something and they carry on.
“It really nice to be able to go back and say ‘this is for you’. ”
The mother-of-two, who writes poetry in her spare time, describes her latest work as a journey through emotion.
It features different sections on a whole range of emotions including love, loss, conflict and dreams.
Jan was moved during support work in Birmingham, when she was looking after a girl who was extremely ill, and was asked by the child’s mother to write her verses down.
She lived in Swindon for four years and worked at the college, formerly in Regent Circus, providing medical support for students for two and half years before moving away in 2006.
It was in this environment that she decided to return to education.
She gained her english GCSE aged 43 and joined a writing group.
Poems which appear in the anthology, Still life and Innocent Grief, were written while she was working at the college.
Jan said: “When I was at Swindon College I just got total support and inspiration and friendship.”
Another inspiration for her poetry has come from a young girl Amanda Rapley-Redfern, who Jan provided medical support for while at Swindon College.
Jan helped her in her quest to get to university, but she passed away aged 21.
“She was one of the reasons I wanted to come back to Swindon,” she said.
Jan also said Wootton Bassett and Lyneham were of particular interest to her because of their military significance.
She is a member of Flow for All, a group for ex-military personnel and their families, which helps deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and encourages people to use writing as part of the healing process.
She said war and its consequences also features heavily in one section of the poetry.
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