Born in Islington in north London, the premature death of her mother just before Sullivan’s 7th birthday necessitated her spending several years at a Boarding School just outside Ashford, in Kent, one of the first in the country to offer therapeutic childcare. It meant that her formative years were spent equally between urban and rural environments, both of which she holds equally dear. 

Returning to London post-education, Sullivan embarked on a peripatetic employment history; the Post Office, retail, banking, manufacturing, construction, law, teaching, local government and the arts, many of which have found their way into her poetry. Since 2018, Sullivan has worked as Administrator for the Poetry Archive, a job she describes as ‘serendipity moving in.’ 

Sullivan cites an old school report which notes that ‘Margaret has a love of books and language and likes listening to poetry’, but didn’t begin writing until her late twenties, with great trepidation, wondering ‘what on earth I could write about which would be of any interest or merit for others’ and, even now, ‘still not sure that I am a proper poet.’ Despite her misgivings, she has had three collections of poetry published, near death (domestic) (Tall Lighthouse, 2007), the remote (Waterloo Press, 2013) and By Way of Reply (Waterloo Press, 2025). Her work has been featured in magazines in the UK and abroad and in two anthologies. She enjoyed a period of office as a Trustee of the Poetry Society and has been a mentor for Survivors’ Poetry. 

Sullivan’s writing is marked by a championing of those who are disadvantaged, challenging injustice with an edged humour – ‘At five, she adds gun to the shopping list / there’s a bit left in the bank’ (Meanwhile, back indoors) or, as in Waterproof, where the seals turn the tables on humankind – ‘Next, we’ll teach them our language.’ Her work deals in wide ranging contemporary issues of power versus representation, calling corporate and institutional excesses to account. She has developed a less is more style of writing, an attempt to strip away the scaffolding – near literally in Aragon Tower, Deptford – and bring into focus the economic, societal and emotional costs occurring in clear, clever, snapshots in time.   

Sullivan has also produced ‘(an) abundance of tender, appalled poems on childhood, fragile parents, too early toughened children’- Dr Simon Jenner, Waterloo Press.  

The recordings also introduce us to Fred, Sullivan’s erstwhile muse…