I’m a writer, poet, editor and teacher based near Stroud in Gloucestershire, England. My work explores contemporary rural experience and belonging, ancestry, place and practices of care, repair and solidarity across human and other-than-human worlds.

Shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize in 2012, I discovered I was pregnant with my first child the day before the awards ceremony and my writing took a back seat for a few years while we raised the little people and grew a menagerie of dog, hens, tortoise and all the chaos of a freelance life juggling work and family in the house and garden where we live just below Rodborough Common in Gloucestershire.

I spend at least half the year covered in mud.

In 2022, I was lucky enough to win the inaugural Laurie Lee Prize for Writing 2022 for a lyrical essay on rave culture, land rights, river access and the climate emergency and in 2023 I was awarded the Poetry Society’s coveted Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for the best poem published in Poetry Review by a poet yet to have a full collection - this was for ‘Life Cycle of the Cochineal Beetle c.1788,’ a poem at the centre of my forthcoming debut collection Red Handed (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). In September 2023 I was truly shocked to be longlisted by the prestigious Nan Shepherd Prize for ‘Source Material,’ my nonfiction work-in-progress. Prior to that I won the International Dylan Thomas Day Competition for my poem ‘The Kiss’ in 2020. Slowly but surely, as the kids grow I’m finding more time for my writing - the gift of time and (head) space was boosted by the award of a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England in 2021, for which I’m incredibly grateful.

‘These rich and vital poems break the surface of waters both restorative and vulnerable—reading them, we’re immersed in another world that pools and glints out of the corner of our eyes.’

Paul Farley, FRSL, poet, writer & broadcaster

My first poetry pamphlet Lake 32 (Yew Tree Press, 2020) explores a year in the life of a lake at the Cotswold Water Park, one of the largest wetlands in western Europe, where I spent a lot of time as a kid and was invited to take up a poetry residency there as an adult. Two subsequent micro-pamphlets Sentient and Cuda ex nihilo explore the minutiae of our local landscapes, common land, waterways and ancient indigenous women’s rites and rituals performed in relation to places (Yew Tree Press). I have developed an embodied creative practice, rooted in my sense of deep immersion in the home landscape I love - a poem sequence was inspired by my swim-walk of my local river 23 miles from source to confluence with the Thames for Living With Water published by Manchester University Press (2023); and my latest collaboration is Glos Mythos, with satirist Emma Kernahan and illustrator Bill Jones (2023), a little book that explores the ways that myths, archetypes and folklore gain popularity during times of adversity.

‘Stunning writing - a vivid segue from one generation to the next. A glorious first winner.’

Jamila Gavin, author and Laurie Lee Prize Judge

My work has been published internationally in a range of journals, including The Poetry Review, The Rialto, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Magma, Dust, Finished Creatures, Ink Sweat & Tears, Fenland Poetry Journal, Raceme, 14 magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, Obsessed with Pipework, Streetcake, Trigger Warning, Places of Poetry, Atrium, The Sunday Telegraph and on BBC Upload.

I enjoy the deep focus and research time afforded by residencies and have been fortunate to undertake a few of these. I was poet in residence at a lake in the Cotswold Water Park (2020), with Stroudwater Textile Trust (2021), the Corinium Museum, Cirencester (2022) and with the ecofeminist Monica Sjöö Curatorial Collective (2023). I am poet in residence throughout 2024 at Sladebank Woods in Stroud, a semi-urban/semi-rural edgeland woodland located between a housing estate and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

I also love the risks and rewards of working across disciplines and with collaborators from different artforms. I’ve worked on sound installations and exhibitions including Plant Communitas at Museum in the Park, Stroud where I painted a poem in indigo onto the gallery wall (April 2022), ‘Immersions: Into the River Cam,’ Robinson College, Cambridge (June, 2022) and at ‘if trees were lone women, what would they sound like?’ where a poem was broadcast on repeat in the trees at Sanctuary Lab, Galloway Forest National Park (November 2021).

With artist Susie Hetherington , I set up The Outposted Project in lockdown, a multidisciplinary art project mapping creative responses to isolation. This project involved over 100 writers, artists, makers, performers and musicians from across Stroud, South London, Brighton & Hove, Brecon & Hay on Wye. A closing exhibition was held in March 2022 at Three Storeys in Nailsworth and is now archived at Gloucestershire Archives.

Originally an academic by trade, I studied at Goldsmiths, Sussex and Manchester Universities, graduating with MAs in literature and creative writing and a British Academy scholarship funded PhD exploring gender, whiteness/race, power, heritage and place in white women’s writing, a toxic subject to this day. I tend not to shy away from difficult issues and have always been interested in social justice, working in global human rights for many years, with a particular focus women, girls and people with disabilities - by day, I still work (increasingly very part time) as a global education consultant for NGOs, government and UN agencies.

I was a Paper Nations Kickstart Writing Producer funded by Bath Spa University in 2020 which helped me to set up Dialect, a network for rural writers, involving mentoring, writers in residence, courses and immersive workshops that take place online and in-person, sometimes in extreme environments. I’m a member of the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE), the Society of Authors and am erstwhile poetry editor for Writers Rebel.

Finally, I am the founding Director of Dialect, a development network for rural and edgeland writers all over the UK. We offer workshops, courses, mentoring and immersive learning opportunities for emerging writers. Recently, we set up Dialect Press, specialising in the sustainable publication of collaborative work.

Please get in touch if you’d like to find out more.

Image credits (above): Carmel King Photography

About my work…