I was born in London, grew up between Paris and Huntingdonshire, and have made my home as an adult in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. I have young children, Audrey and Robin, as well as three guinea pigs, one rabbit, and entirely too many books.
I am a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writer Award for poetry in 2016, and am lucky enough to be mentored by Gerry Cambridge.
I have had poems published in magazines including Mslexia, The Dark Horse, The Stinging Fly, Agenda, The Interpreter’s House, New Walk and Shoreline of Infinity as well as in the 154 anthology of sonnets, New Writing Scotland, The Emma Press Anthology of Love, and the online blog And Other Poems. I am co-author of Char, a pamphlet of poems on the subject of working women’s history in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh, written with fellow Edinburgh poet Pen Reid.
I was a Troubadour prizewinner 2014, winner of the Fenland Reed Ouse Washes competition and the WoLF poetry competition, awarded 2nd place in the Flambard Prize, twice runner up in the Penfro Poetry Competition and placed third for the 2015 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Award. My sonnet ‘Potterrow’ was chosen to be displayed on public transport in Guernsey as part of the Poetry on the Move scheme.
I have a pamphlet of sci-fi poems, The Parlour Guide to Exo-Politics, published by House Press. This is a narrative sequence of poems imagining aliens landing in Scotland’s ancient woodland and the subsequent political fallout, and it explores themes of migration, personhood, gender, language, and homelessness. Written to accompany original music composed by Matt Rogers and performed by the Scottish Clarinet Quartet, The Parlour Guide was performed at Hidden Door arts festival at Leith Theatre in 2017, and in other venues and formats subsequently.
I received a cultural commission in 2016 from LGBT Youth Scotland and LGBT History Month, funded by Creative Scotland, to write a collection of children’s poems based around LGBT retellings of traditional Scottish myths and stories. The result of this commission, ‘Wain’, will be published by The Emma Press in February 2019.