I did my BA in English lit, and hated the restriction – I’d always read more in translation than not; coming from a working-class background, what I knew of as British literature – the writers who made big prize lists and/or were stocked in WH Smith, Doncaster’s only bookshop until I was 17 – seemed incredibly, alienatingly middle-class. Then in 2009, just after the financial crash, I graduated with no more specific skill than ‘can analyse a bit of poetry’.
