As a troubled, rebellious, but incredibly bright teenager, Dr Paul Hullah confesses he lashed out at his devoted parents, ridiculing them for their poor education. It is something he still feels guilty about today. In a life marred, sadly, by heartbreak and tragedy, his love of words and language, he reflects, provided some solace.

His mother died when he was just 14 years old, his father two years later. An only child, Dr Hullah only discovered by chance, aged nine, that Mary, a factory worker, and Bill, a farm manager, had adopted him as a baby.

His childhood, he admits, sounds like a particularly unbelievable, cheap Victorian thriller. That probably explains why, when he was a student, a girl once slapped him across the face, accusing him of trying to make a fool of her when he told her his story as he tried to chat her up in a bar. “Maybe that’s why I put so much into creative writing. Perhaps, since being slapped in the face, it became a way of dealing with it without being too obvious or brutal,” he laughs.

Momentarily lost in thought, he goes on to add, more seriously: “I think I tried for many years to deny my parents’ death had anything to do with my poetry, but looking back, it did define and shape who I am. I suppose we express things in art that we don’t in conversation. Language can be such an empowering thing.”

As a sensitive child, growing up on an isolated farm near Bedale, he was used to retreating into his own imagination, reading novels from the age of five and writing his own stories. Eventually, he says, the world of academia became almost like a family to him and he went on to have five books of poetry published. “Literature has remained my best, most faithful and patient friend,” he says.

His critically acclaimed work contains themes of love, loss and longing and he once won praise from novelist Iris Murdoch for writing ‘fine poems, that touch me deeply'. Subtle, moving and honest, his most recent work reflects on the tragic death of his Japanese wife Akiko six years ago.

The streetscape that Dr Hullah looks out on now from his two-storey apartment, in a suburb halfway between the two biggest cities in Japan, is a far cry from the rural landscape of North Yorkshire, where he grew up.

Having lived in the Far East for 23 years, where he is professor of poetry at Tokyo’s Meiji Gakuin University, he has immersed himself in the culture, eating rice and fish and speaking Japanese every day.

Describing himself as a "working class chancer from Northern England", he regularly returns home to North Yorkshire, which is where his love of poetry and literature was nurtured as a schoolboy. Grateful for the education he received at Ripon Grammar School, and keen to give something back, Dr Hullah, who is about to publish his latest book on the work of Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, is now hoping to inspire today’s students by sponsoring a poetry prize at his former school.

His family moved to the small cathedral city of Ripon after his father suffered an accident at work, and, as a result, lost his job and the family home. They were loving parents, says Dr Hullah, who recalls stumbling across his adoption paperwork during the move. It came as a shock. “I remember crying to Mum, that she must be disappointed. She said ‘It’s the opposite, we chose you.’ When Dad came home I told him all I wanted was a normal family.” His father told him something then that he has never forgotten. “When you get older, you will realise there is no such thing as a normal family.”

Both Mary and Bill had left school before they turned 16. “They were not educated, but they really did love me. They couldn’t have children of their own and poured a lot of love and affection onto me,” says Dr Hullah. Mary and Bill encouraged his reading. “They bought me books like Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and Black Beauty. My reading ability was outstanding.”

Relocating to Ripon, where his father found work as a gardener, turned out to be a fortunate move, says Dr Hullah. The family lived in a bungalow in the grounds of a large house where his mother worked as a maid.

Bullied at primary school because he was an outsider, Paul, who admits he was a troublesome child, fought back with words. “I was good at coming back with clever remarks,” he says. He was soon befriended by the son of his mother’s employers, who, at 15, was six years older. “He became like a big brother, taking me under his wing, introducing me to rock music, poetry and more mature books.” The rest of the family also encouraged him. “They saw I had an inquisitive mind and encouraged me to aspire to the grammar school.”

Once there, Paul mixed with children from a different social background. “Now I would think, ‘So what?’ but it was something I was very conscious of at the time. Coming home, it became clear my intellect was beyond my parents’ and, I’m ashamed to say, I ridiculed them for that, in a childish, awful and wicked way. It was disgusting behaviour.”

He still feels weighed down by guilt. “I used the fact they had been poorly educated against them. I behaved very badly. To this day, I feel awful about it.” Nevertheless, he thrived at grammar school. “It was the perfect environment. It encouraged learning and the pursuit of knowledge, empowering and changing me.”

His father shielded him from most of the visibly distressing aspects of his mother’s 14-month long battle with cancer but, when she died, Bill was devastated. “It hurled him into a black despair. I railed against her death in a stupid, typically teenage way, blaming him for everything. I was incredibly unkind.”

The pair had to leave the family bungalow and moved to a council flat. “We were two typical men, living together, but not communicating.” His father died shortly after being diagnosed with liver cancer two years later.

While he was in hospital, 16-year-old Paul went off the rails and was almost put into care, until the family of a school friend came to his rescue. “They said I could stay with them to do my A levels. They were incredibly kind,” he says. His teachers were also supportive. “They were all on my side. From then on, academia became my shepherd, in part, my family. I was just in love with language.”

Inspired by everything from the lyrics of David Bowie and Marc Bolan to the works of T S Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins, he began to write poetry. And Christina Rossetti’s work, full of inconsistencies and mysteries, particularly intrigued him.

While a student at the University of Edinburgh, he also worked as a music journalist and fronted a number of bands, one of which, Teenage Dog Orgy, was referred to as ‘legendary’ by the NME. Sounds magazine described Hullah as ‘a silver-tongued devil’.

After gaining a first class degree and Ph.D, he was encouraged by a tutor, who had taken him under his wing, to take up a university teaching post in Japan and concentrate on a career in academia. “I have known unfathomable kindness since my parents died,” he says.

Japan opened up a whole new world. “When I arrived, I might as well have landed on the moon, it was so wonderfully new, so different to everything I had experienced. I loved it.” Sadly, his wife Akiko, a nurse, whom he married in 2006, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2007 and died two years later, aged 40. “It was like being a boxer in the ring, getting up and being hit in the face again. I fell apart.”

Dr Hullah’s most recent book of poetry, Homing, published in 2011 grew out of this devastating experience and he now performs it at literary festivals. “It’s about being cast out into what seems a dark, bad place. I had to find something meaningful in an incomprehensible series of events.”

Having fallen seriously ill himself when he neglected his own health after Akiko’s death, Dr Hullah, who is now 51, says reaching the age of 50 was a turning point. “I just thought I was incredibly blessed, fortunate to still be here, and happy to be alive.”

He has no plans to return to live in the UK. “I love my job. I have no game plan now apart from trying to be useful to other people.

“For a long time I thought it was cool to be antagonistic, volatile, grumpy and miserable. I was arrogant and conceited when young and thought it wasn’t cool to be anything else. Now I think it is really cool to be happy and gentle and kind, to be loved and be liked, that is what I say to young people.”

We Found Her Hidden: the Remarkable Poetry of Christina Rossetti will be published by Word Power Books later this year. Homing (Word Power, 2011).

Selected poetry: paulhullah.weebly.com

SONGS OF PRAISE

Maybe there's a moment

In the perigee of wonder,

In the birthing pains of wisdom,

Sapling shoots from treeless tundra.

Myologies of mourning melt

Like snowflakes on a windowsill,

In minding days in songs of praise,

And what would not now will.

Above the fallen full-blown rose

The budding rose joys into view,

The greener grass beyond the gap

Reminding you of you.

Mainly there's a moment

When the harming turns to healing,

As the garden gets to grow again,

This new life becomes a feeling.