Professor Tony Curtis gave a very entertaining, informative and well-attended talk at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery on Tuesday.

The talk entitled Writing -From Desk to Bookshop was organised as part of the national World Book Day, which celebrates both the author and the reader.

Professor Curtis is the Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan and introduced the highly regarded creative writing course at this institution.

In the opening to his talk, Professor Curtis stated that it is "always a delight to come to the museum which is surely the finest small museum in the country."

As a former Greenhillian, he was also happy to see students from Greenhill School in the audience and commenced the talk by stressing his gratitude to Greenhill for shaping out his future career in writing poetry.

His first published poem, of which he was today profoundly embarrassed, appeared in the Greenhillian magazine and it was the excitement and pride of seeing his name in print associated with the created written word that steered him towards the pursuit of creative writing.

Professor Curtis expounded on the processes behind writing a poem, stating that he created poems "when it was easier to write a poem than not to write a poem."

He read from several published works, illustrating the way a writer draws not only on their own experiences but on the broader experiences of other people as well as world events, and one of his poems entitled Soup, based on the life of a young boy in Auschwitz, strongly demonstrated this point.

He also read extracts of poetry from his most recent publication, Real South Pembrokeshire.

The researching of this book had brought him back to the county with both an academic and personal viewpoint and the resulting publication had been both a personal and historical journey of discovery.

He stated that he had learned so much about the county and his own family history during the writing of the book and that he could never imagine not having Pembrokeshire in his life.

He summed up the talk by stating that getting published involved "a little bit of skill and a lot of luck."

Everyone in the audience agreed that Professor Curtis has, at least, plenty of the first.

A selection of Professor Curtis's books are available for purchase at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery.