Quiet rebel says her poetry is a mirror on life's highs and lows

One thing school in Toronto, Canada, in the 1970s didn't teach me was how to deal with being a non-conformist. I struggled with that for years and with accepting myself as someone who did not fit society's moulds.

Primary school was difficult because I was quite shy. My sister and I used to get beaten up and shoved through cedar hedges by a gang of bullies. When one broke his leg, our teacher asked us to make get well cards.

I drew a picture of the bully in bed with his leg in a cast. But I signed it, 'Your friendly enemy ...'. The teacher was outraged and called me a bad girl in front of the class. He gave me detention and called my parents.

Fortunately, my mother came to my defence and explained that I was just being honest. I've never forgotten, though, the pain of the humiliation by that teacher and I'm sure that experience has helped to make me a more compassionate teacher myself.

During my childhood and adolescence, I learned so much from close encounters with nature in the wilderness of Algonquin Provincial Park. My immersion in the natural world was better than any botany or zoology class could ever be: loons and timber wolves echoing each others' calls, shimmering curtains of aurora borealis decorating the night sky.

During junior high, I found classmates with similar interests and more sympathetic teachers. High school was the same but I was never part of the mainstream. For a short time I dated a football player and went to a prom with him, but he was only interested in one thing - and it wasn't what I was reading at the time!

I had an inspiring but quirky Latin and classical civilisations teacher called Mr Payne. He'd quote the chorus from Aristophanes' The Frogs: 'Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax, Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!' as we did Latin declensions in our notebooks.