Frances White grew up near London with strong family ties in South Wales. During her teens she was influenced by the songs of Bob Dylan, and the poems of Dylan Thomas, The Liverpool Poets and Robert Frost. As an English teacher, and later as a Teacher of the Deaf, she encouraged creative writing in pupils of all ages and abilities.
 
She was a founder member of Words poetry group, formed by the late Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan Thomas. Together, the group of four poets published their poems in three anthologies, Away With Words (Poetry Monthly Press, 2007), A Ring of Words (Number 11 Publishing, 2012), and A Brush with Words (Number 11 Publishing, 2015).
 
Frances won first prizes in three local poetry competitions and was highly-commended in the Torbay Open Poetry Competition 2010. Her readings have been well received at London’s Troubadour, Torriano Meeting House, Poetry Café, Lumen, Rhythm & Muse, Merton Abbey Fest 2014; at Torbay Festival of Poetry 2012 and Laugharne Arts Festival in Wales, 2006, 2007, 2014.
 
She was selected by The Poetry School as Poet-in-Residence at Woodville Day Centre for people with dementia where she organized poetry readings in the garden for London Open Squares Weekend 2017.
 
Frances lives in South West London with her husband. They have three sons and two granddaughters.
 
Swiftscape, her first collection, was published by The Seventh Quarry Press, 2016.
 
Review comments:
 

The poems in SWIFTSCAPE ‘outfly the shadows’ as they find new spaces for their ‘soaring shapes’ to lodge in your mind’s eye long after you’ve finished reading. Expect verses as gloriously inventive as the newly coined word which forms the collection’s title.

 

Patric Cunnane (Dodo Modern Poets)

 
 

Frances White writes mostly short poems, many about childhood and relationships, with a clarity of language and sureness of touch which is very moving. Her feeling for nature shines throughout this collection.

 

Angela Kirby (Poet)

 
 

There is a cunning simplicity to Frances White’s first collection. She inhabits a world of images, not so far removed from a medieval psalter. You will find a spiritual dimension that consoles but never evades.

 

Peter Pegnall (Bright Scarf)

 
 

Frances shares with us her close observation of nature as ‘Wasteland quivers with shoot and blade’. Her poems hint at what stays unspoken and she storytells with an atmospheric scatter of words. Travel with her through remembered landscapes ‘disappearing / like meteors / over Rhondda’.

 

Camilla Reeve (Palewell Press)

 
 

With lyrical nostalgia Frances White evokes childhood memories, key family moments and the transient beauty of the natural world…

 

Alison Hill (Rhythm & Muse)

 
 

Links to more poems by Frances White:
 
at Dodo Modern Poets            at My Delayed Reactions            at YouTube
 
and review at Write Out Loud