Valerie Gillies

VALERIE GILLIES has composed poetry since the age of fourteen. A former Edinburgh Makar, Royal Literary Fellow and an Associate of Harvard University, Valerie has been a literary arts practitioner in psychiatric and general hospitals with Artlink and a Writer in Residence in universities and libraries. She co-facilitated the creative writing workshops at Maggie’s Centre, Edinburgh, for sixteen years, and has been a trainer with Lapidus Scotland.

Her many collections include Tweed Journey, following the River Tweed from source to sea, and The Spring Teller, poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs. Her work always explores the healing potential of its environment, and this has an invigorating effect upon the reader.