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Once a vicar’s wife, Valerie is now married to a racing driver and mad about green issues, especially badgers, free range hens and children. Her work has been published in several of the poetry presses and prize anthologies: Envoi, Tears in the Fence, Brando’s Hat, Smoke, Fire, Kent and Sussex Anthology, the Exeter Prize Anthology, Poetry Monthly, Dorset Waters, Dorset Contours and the Russell Cotes Museum’s “Poetry Under Painted Skies”. In 2004, she won Ottaker’s regional poetry prize. She has a degree in Russian and taught English, French and German for many years as well as teaching Creative Writing at Yeovil College, and Shaftesbury and at Salisbury Adult Education Evening Classes. For several years she has edited the "Friends of Arvon Newsletter" and is the present Chair of the Friends of Arvon. In 2002, Valerie inherited the Chair of East Street Poets from David Caddy and now runs the Wessex Poetry Festival’s Poetry Platform, involving many local poetry groups. This work has included the running of the Children’s Poetry Competition, and the subsequent publishing of the annual Children’s Anthology, to showcase the winning poems and the work of the many runners-up, and a selection of work by the organisers. A collection of her poems, "air dumplings and paper cutlets", was published by George Mann Publications in 2001. Review comments include: "... verve and originality ... scenes embroidered in silks or the flash of a camera. ... This is powerful stuff. She crams fear and terror in a few terse lines, takes time to explore a complex difficult relationship... a new and exciting talent" Patricia Bishop "There is at the heart of her poetry a mystical turning and twisting" Mary Maher Next? An MA in Creative Writing…
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