The 200-year-old Lit & Phil has never had a writer in residence. Now they've got poet Sheree Mack who tells Tamzin Lewis about floggings, slavery and today's National Poetry Day.

Poring over collections of 18th Century tracts, poet Sheree Mack has just come across eyewitness accounts of whippings and floggings in Jamaica during the slave trade.

"These things happened and they do need to be exposed because they have been glossed over," Sheree says.

"Schoolchildren have bare facts about slavery, the economics is overplayed while punishments are underplayed.

"And although William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp helped bring abolition about, there were also rebellions, runaways and African anti-slavery campaigners which contributed to the end of slavery."

As the first writer in residence at the Lit & Phil on Newcastle's Westgate Road, Sheree is spending four months researching books which relate to the trade and abolition of transatlantic slavery.

She is working with staff, volunteers, visitors and friends of the library to shed light on the region's involvement in the trade.

Her residency will lay the foundation for events and projects to mark the bicentennial of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill, which was passed by Parliament in March 1807.

Sheree, 34, says: "I am the first writer in residence and it is an achievement and an honour. I am going through tracts and speeches to see what connections there are in this area to slavery. It is a learning experience. I thought that in 1807 everyone was free but that wasn't the case. It was a long drawn out process.

"The Atlantic had to be patrolled as traders were still trying to bring people across the ocean. The HMS Trincomalee in Hartlepool was one of the ships which was being used to police the Atlantic."

Sheree is concentrating on evidence which relates to people in the region, including the anti-slavery Quaker women who sent money to the United States to support the education of children, and there were links with Whitehaven in Cumbria.

"It is an investigation and, in a sense, there is too much to cover," says Sheree.

"There are also families in this area who made their money from the slave trade. There are hidden stories and voices."

She is going to use her research as a basis for new work and will give a reading in December.

And she hopes to work with a composer on a new multi-media performance piece about the slave trade.

Sheree left a career in teaching in order to write and is project co-ordinator of writing group Identity on Tyne.

Sheree, in a tradition of black British women writers dating back to Mary Prince, who was a slave from Antigua brought to England where she was freed, is studying for a PhD in Black British Women's Poetry at Newcastle University.

And she has recently discovered her own connection to slavery.

"My dad's side were taken from Sierra Leone to Trinidad," she says.

"Before learning this, I knew about slavery mainly from the literature side.

"Many poets have retraced their past and have explored slavery. The subject has been written about a lot, especially by black writers.

"I am thinking about how you can make it original or approach it from a new angle. I haven't pinned that down yet.

"This work is pushing the boundaries of my writing. It is getting me to step outside myself and outside my comfort zone." As writer in residence Sheree is also doing workshops in schools and today, National Poetry Day, she is taking assembly at Moorside Community Primary School in Newcastle's West End before starting a regular series of workshops.

Identity is the theme for this year's National Poetry Day, which has engaged millions of people in poetry since 1994.

The Lit & Phil recently put out a call for poems about identity and 26 poets will read at an event tonight.

Well known poets including Peter Mortimer, Cynthia Fuller and Linda France will read alongside new and emerging poets who are reading for the first time. A publication featuring all the poems will be given away free on the night.

* National Poetry Day's Identity event is at Newcastle's Lit & Phil tonight at 7.30pm. Tel (0191) 232-0192 to reserve a seat.

Why did you come to England?

Name: Charles Mason

English, not the African name.

How can I know the real great granddad

without knowing your real name?

Why did you come to England?

What was wrong with your life on the Gold Coast

that you had to leave all you knew, for another world?

What was the beauty of England

except a word resting on the lips of a sailor?

Why did you come to England?

Looking at your face, with no hint of a smile,

was it worth the sacrifice?

You found a red haired Geordie woman and

two children, you never saw reach double figures.

Why did you come to England?

SHEREE MACK