Angela Leighton was born in Wakefiled to a Yorkshire father and a Neapolitan mother. As a result, doubleness has always been a part of her life, whether thinking in English or Italian, as a literary critic or a poet. She has published many works of criticism, most recently 'Hearing Things: The Work of Sound in Literature' (2018), as well as four volumes of poetry: 'A Cold Spell' (2000), 'Sea Level' (2006), The Messages (2012), and 'Spills' (2016), which includes memoir, fiction and translations from the Italian. She returns often to Yorkshire and to Italy, usually to walk about, watch and listen. Those activities often become the seeds of her poems, in particular the absent-minded activity of walking.