A CLOSET poet from Tockington has finally published her writings following a five-year "pressure" campaign by the whole village.

Sandy Shaw, 68, was worn down by exhortations from her friends and family to compile her poems into a book and she took a leap of faith last month by releasing her very first collection, Once Upon A Village.

The humble writer, who has been putting her thoughts and impressions into verse for 20 years, parted with her drafts and handed them over to the Tockington Press which had been battling hard to add her to its portfolio of authors.

"People really pushed me to do it," she said. "The poems were sitting in a box and people said you need to put them in a book."

It was a communal process, with everybody, including St Mary's vicar in Olveston, who read through Mrs Shaw's selection and acted as honorary editor, throwing themselves into the artistic endeavour.

"I’ve always liked writing," she said. "If something on the news moved me, such as the man who shot all those children in Dunblane, I wrote about it.

"Some of them are about the village, about friendship. I also wrote about having a child and about youth. Some of them are very funny."

And only a few weeks after its release the much-anticipated Once Upon a Village has become such a hit that it has already almost sold out.

The mother-of-two said she was surprised at the successs of her book, though she may have had an inkling that it would prove popular. After all, she had a few poems commissioned by her friends over the years. She also recently received an award from Thornbury's Inner Wheel Club.

And Mrs Shaw is quite the multitasker. The former nursing sister at Southmead has also tried her hand at writing a pantomime and a musical, the Mary and Joseph Roadshow, with her choirmaster and organist husband David.

"I was in church one Christmas and I thought it was so boring for the children there so I wrote a poem on the whole nativity story for the village and it was performed. It’s all in verse. We updated it two years ago and it was performed by 48 people. I have written all my life. There is a lot of variety to what I do."