For Paula Jennings, poems frequently begin life as an image or phrase rather than an idea. Even the sounds of poems in unfamiliar languages are used as vehicles to surprising destinations. Critics have commented on ‘the assured and innovative way she handles language’, her ‘fine musical ear’ and ‘willingness to take risks’, her poetry’s ‘otherworldly delicacy’. She enjoys working across art forms and has had fruitful collaborations with visual artists.

Her work has appeared in literary magazines, national newspapers and anthologies. It has been translated into Polish, broadcast on radio and carved in stone. She has performed widely, including three readings for StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival. She has been awarded Scottish Arts Council Writers’ Bursaries and Hawthornden Fellowships.

Paula works with poetry students individually and in poetry writing workshops. She also uses poetry in creative sessions with people who have dementia, sometimes making collaborative poems that speak vividly of living in other dimensions.

Publications:

• Under a Spell Place, HappenStance, 2015
• From the Body of the Green Girl, HappenStance Press, 2008
• Singing Lucifer, Onlywomen Press, 2002/2007

Poems in anthologies

• One Foot on the Mountain: An Anthology of British Feminist Poetry 1969 to 1979, ed. Lilian Mohin, Onlywomen Press (1979)
• Such Strange Joy: Ten Years of Shore Poets, Ed. Allan Crosbie, inyx publishing (2001)
• Lament: Scottish poems for funerals and consolation, Scottish Poetry Library 2005
• Skein of Geese: Poems from the 100 Poets Gathering, StAnza 2007, StAnza/the Shed Press (2008)