As part of BBC Music Get Playing, supporting amateur music making around the UK, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument.

In the third programme of the series, the poet Fiona Sampson explores how playing the violin to professional standard in her youth has informed her life and work today.

She relives her youth spent at summer schools and in orchestras and describes playing the violin in the practice rooms at the Royal Academy of Music.

And she describes how the shape that that her body made around the violin stays with her wherever she goes.

For more information visit bbc.co.uk/getplaying

Producer: Emma Kingsley.