Tina MacNaughton was born and brought up in Portsmouth, a city that means a great deal to her. Starting out in one of the terraces at the back of Fratton Park, she first went to Penhale Infant and Junior Schools. Moving to Milton at ten, she attended Milton Junior School, then Meon Middle School. At a time when the school leaving age was raised in an effort to combat high unemployment in the 1970s, Tina attended Great Salterns Comprehensive School (now Portsmouth College) where she took A-Level English, French, and Spanish. She left her home city to study languages, business and secretarial studies in Manchester, returning to work as a bilingual secretary at Plessey and De La Rue in Havant before leaving to take care of her three sons.

She has moved around the South East and South West, and now divides her time between Crowthorne, Berkshire, where she works as an acupuncturist, and her seaside flat in Southsea, where she walks, goes to the beach, and writes a lot of poetry. She belongs to the Portsmouth Writer’s Hub and The Wagtails Open Mic Group based in Chichester. Her frank poems about menopause and women’s issues have resonated with many readers.

A full collection of Tina’s poetry *On the Shoulders of Lions was published by The Choir Press in July 2021. The front cover, illustrated by her son, is inspired by the Guildhall stone lions – her father used to lift her onto them during Sunday walks. Several poems are inspired by her love for her home city. ‘Stone’ recounts childhood walks through the city; ‘Seventeen’ refers to the Southsea Common War Memorial, where her Great Uncle, who served on HMS Glow Worm and was torpedoed and killed at just seventeen, has an inscription.

Always a writer, Tina has been published in various anthologies, magazines and journals. She writes poetry for The People’s Friend Magazine, The Portsmouth News and Wokingham Today. ‘Minding the Trams’ appears in the Summer 2021 Orbis while ‘Winter’s Sigh’ won a prize in the US Ventura County Project Annual Competition (2021). Her poems also appear on the Second Light Women’s Poetry website. She has a commissioned poetry-writing service, WriteRhymes, and last year published a Covid Christmas cross-genre illustrated poetic fairytale When the Elves Rescued Christmas. Her pamphlet collection of poetry, Love, Snowy Owls, Minding the Trams and other poems (2021) is available directly from the author (write.rhymes@outlook.com). Under consideration by publishers, her novel, Delphy Rose is about a young working-class girl who sang in a band during the 1980s and is struggling to leave a toxic relationship and let go of past demons.

If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions about any of the map entries, please contact the Map Director, Mark Frost: mark.frost@port.ac.uk