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My latest poetry collections, The Last Woman Born on the Island (Vagabond Voices) and The Red House (Drunk Muse Press) are now out and I am chuffed to bits with the beautiful books both these presses have created. See the Publications page for more details. Previous publications are a pamphlet, Rib, (Wayleave Press, 2021), and two full collections: The Art of Egg, (Two Ravens Press, 2015; reprinted Pindrop Press, 2019) and To Know Bedrock (Pindrop Press, 2011).
News * I am delighted to have won 1st place in the Kent & Susex Open Poetry Competition 2025 with my poem Oblivion. * The Scottish Poetry Library has selected one of my poems, Golf Ball, Stalag Luft III as one of their Best Scottish Poems 2023. * My 70-word poem Lichen won a competition run by the National Poety Library in 2024 to celebrate their 70th anniversary, and was read at The Southbank Centre as part of London Literature Festival. * Two poems were highly commended in the McLellan Poetry Competition 2024. You can read them here. * Another was commended in the Magma Poetry Competition 2023/24, Editors' Prize category (mine's on p16.) * The Last Woman Born on the Island was longlisted as one of 12 titles for the Highland Book Prize 2022. It was also named by publisher Vagabond Voices as their best-selling book of 2022, across all categories. Charlotte Gann, writing in The Frogmore Papers, describes the poems as "generous, full of atmosphere and sense of place". * Reviews of The Red House have been very forthcoming, probably due to the niche-ness of the collection. Hilary Menos of The Friday Poem, says, "love of language underpins this new collection"; Clare Best, writing in The Frogmore Papers, describes it as, "rich in thought, language, memory, story and humanity", while Mandy Haggith calls it "deliciously vivid poetry" in the pages of in Northwords Now. Jennifer McGowan in Orbis says simply, "Read this book". Did my heart do a flutter? You bet it did.
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