After a brief spell in office-work, Alan has worked in Further and Adult Education. He is married, with three children, and lives in Buxton, Derbyshire, a spa town in the Pennines.
Alan enjoys travel, particularly around the Mediterranean, dabbles in gardening and enjoys wine and conversation.
He has always read and enjoyed poetry, and was published in small magazines such as Lines in the mid-1970's. He stopped writing for more than twenty five years but began again about five years ago. In particular he is interested in using a modern idiom within a formal verse setting.
Alan Wickes is a moderator at Sonnet Central, an on-line poetry workshop dedicated the development of the Sonnet form. He contributes regularly to Eratosphere, a [poetry board dedicated to the development of modern metrical poetry. He has had work accepted by Znine, a literary magazine run by the the English Department of the University of Texas at Arlington. His poetry features regularly in Worm, an email based poetry magazine, where his work has been commended on a number of occasions as 'editors choice'. His work has appeared in Aesthetica, a York based Arts magazine featuring new writers, artists and photographers, and more recently in Loch Raven Review's Winter 2005 edition. His sonnet, Barcelona, won best sonnet in Ware Poets national competition in 2004.