Where poetry influencers are concerned I grew up reading the likes of Edward Lear, Spike Milligan, and Robert Louis Stevenson, besides a whole host of other unforgettable songs and rhymes from poetry treasury’s not unlike the one’s you will find here: http://www.wordsforlife.org.uk/songs over at National Literacy Trust.
As a teenager I moved towards the fiction of Ray Bradbury, Steven King and Ed McBain.
Growing up in the locality where I did, us kids were really lucky to be able to access a library just at the top of our street.
In my younger years I have to shout out to Enid Blyton, Hans Christian Anderson and all those delightful Children’s Classic staples, the ladybird books 
the Dandy and Beano that kept us entertained for hours, the list is endless…
These days where other genres as concerned I enjoy a good autobiography, a well written biography, I tend to go for a punchy creepy fiction short story such as the type Roald Dahl wrote in his adult ‘tales of the unexpected.’ Reference books are a staple go to as are gardening, true crime, art, esoteric, and nature books and I do like Pam Eyres poetry too.