A poet who had his first work published in the Telegraph & Argus almost 23 years ago has returned to Bradford to celebrate two awards and a professorship by taking tea with the Lord Mayor.

When he was just seven, Antony Rowland sent a poem to the T&A called The Tawny Owl, telling the story of the bird as it hunts for its meal. Now Dr Rowland is coming back to his hom city for tea with Councillor Stanley King, after achieving his poetry awards and becoming an English professor at the University of Salford where he is starting its first creative writing course.

"I'm not sure it was even a hobby back then," said Dr Rowland. "I can't remember what I was like when I was seven. I remember wanting to be either a poet or a teacher, or maybe both.''

The 30-year-old, from Clayton, received the Eric Gregory award last year from the London-based Society of Authors for creative writing by someone aged under 30. He has also picked up the North West Award from Project North West for his poetry. Dr Rowland, who went to Bradford Grammar School, has had 15 pieces published since taking poetry seriously at the age of 21, though he took a break for six years until the age of 29 to focus on teaching.

Inspiration at the beginning came from his travels around post-Communist eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but later poems have been based closer to Bradford. Dr Rowland, who is talking to a Manchester publishing house about printing an anthology, said: "It was fascinating travelling around eastern Europe at the time. But then I began to trace my family roots around Bradford and began writing poems about its history, widening them out to a national context.

"One piece was called Suffrage, based on a printers which my granddad worked in. It was burned down in 1915, supposedly by Suffragettes."

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