Meet the Tesco delivery packer (who's also a published poet)

But by night, Prince Unsworth is a poet.

The 25-year-old from Boyatt Wood in Eastleigh says he developed his love of poetry while he was a student at Kings’ School in Winchester.

But it was only around a year ago that he began penning his own verses.

His subjects include love, beauty, nature and horror, and he turns out his poems at an impressive rate, spending around four hours a day writing and generally producing one or two poems at a time.

His dream is to see a book of his work in Waterstones. He might not be quite there yet, but Prince has been delighted to have his work, A Chapbook of Poems, top the Official UK Chapbook Chart for seven weeks – it’s currently standing at number two.

His chapbook is a small self-published book, that Prince created and has been selling via Amazon.

Prince says that he is thrilled that strangers are buying and reading his work.

His main aim in publishing his work was simply to reach a wider audience, and he charges as little for his book as the website will allow – £3 for a paperback – netting him just ten pence per copy, but he isn’t in it for the money.

“I love the fact that people are reading my poems,” he said.

“It’s more than I ever thought I would achieve. It’s surreal that people are reading it.”

Prince says he fell in love with poetry while at school.

“It developed with the sense of escapism from life that reading gave me,” he adds.

“I remember the first book I ever read which was Stephan King’s Carrie and being so involved from page one that I’d forget where I was for a while and all about the things that worried me. With that in mind, I hoped that one day people would read my work and it would give them the same feeling.”

Prince was also inspired to pen his own verse when he discovered that Michael Jackson, who he was a fan of, had written poetry.

He is the first to admit that his passion is a far cry from his supermarket day job.

“It is a big contrast to Tesco,” he says, adding that he often comes up with ideas of poems while packing people’s orders.

“I do that for easy money. I was a labourer before, and I was working twice as hard for half the money. I don’t really have a career plan, so if my poetry doesn’t take off, I’ll probably be at Tesco forever, but I’m very driven with my writing.”

Prince, who got engaged to his girlfriend, Courtney, in July, lives with his father and youngest brother.

He says that at first they were unsure about his creative work.

“I think they thought I was living in a dream world, but they’ve come round to the idea,” he says.

Prince went to college after school but didn’t like the courses he had chosen and dropped out. But at around the same time, he began taking a weekly evening class in creative writing, which he fell in love with.

His favourite poets are Maya Angelou, John Keats, Rumi, Leonard Cohen and Robert Burns.

“I find I go much deeper into my feelings when I’m writing,” he says.

“I love to create narrative stories and experiment with different forms. I aim to write poetry that everyone can understand and enjoy, so my poems are often short and simple.

“I feel like I’ll never stop writing. I’ve finally found something I love and am working on a bigger and better collection, called Heart, Mind and Magic.

“Before I started writing, I never realised how much of a relief it was to express myself in this way.”

l Additional reporting by Josh Bourne.

My Love For You - by Prince Unsworth

So damned by the perils of the boyfriend,

But snaking shallow slowly building blue,

Seeking out your estuary of heart-mend,

My love’s a river flowing just for you,

My paper-boated thoughts, float, meander,

A glance of you’s enough to burst its bank,

Your smile sweetly welcomed this outlander,

I dream the day the dam is but a plank,

You, to me, are like the sun, you’re shining,

I picture you to fill the valley's void,

Companionship is what my heart is pining,

The weight of loneliness is asteroid,

So long as flowers helped by sunshine grow,

The river of my love for you will flow.