! Stop Press !

from Indigo Dreams Publishing

ready on August 1st 2010

My first collection of poetry  'About Time, Too - will be available from August 2010 : there's a preview page on www.indigodreams.co.uk. Go to Bookshop - Authors - Vivien Jones for some extracts, some very generous endorsements and more background facts than you currently know. Launch readings are planned for the Mid-Steeple,Dumfries and at the Wigtown Book Festival - details to follow.

first chapbook 2006

Selkirk Lapwing Press

 chapbook 2006

erbacce Press

poems on renaissance themes

2008

2008 collaboration with artist, scupltor and three writers

international anthology of women's writing 2008  

Haven Books Hong Kong 

2009 commission for RSPB

with three others

2007 new writing and music;

performance text

2009 new writing and music;

performance text

I have lived and worked in Scotland for forty    years, working in alternative education until the closure of a school put a temporary stop on my career as a teacher. I was a mature student at the Crichton Campus of the University of Glasgow in Dumfries where I took a Creative Writing course (part of my MA Hons degree) under the direction of Tom Pow. In the last eight years I have been writing in all the genres that I once taught to others. I am also a founding member of the renaissance music group, The Galloway Consort. 

I am a writer of prose, drama and poetry, which I also perform in readings and collaborative events with musicians. I have a particular interest in renaissance themes which have formed the basis of several performance events including site-specific dramas in historic locations. My prose work is in the form of short stories which explore the small rebellions in everyday life that sustain a sense of individuality, particularly in the lives of women. The themes of my poetry are domestic; rituals of family life, the association of food and nurture, the experience of making and hearing music, and latterly, work on environmental themes.

Richard and I played music for

 'Not A Muse' launch reading in Newcastle,

 November 2009

Events and projects

I have a strong interest in presenting the written word to live audiences and have created collaborative events with musicians that have seen successful public performances including a performance event in 2007,‘Making Waves’, with all the texts printed into a chapbook, which featured new writing on watery themes with music inspired by texts written by Jackie Galley and me. The same group, friends as well as writers and musicians, has developed a new programme,’Tree’, which has had performances at the Wigtown and Sedbergh Books Festivals in 2009.  In 2008 I worked with three other writers and two artists to create Soundscapes, an exhibition and reading sequence that was staged twice in the GaelForce Festival of the Arts and which also produced an illustrated chapbook. In 2009 the same group have produced a similar event in association with The Great Wild Goose Chase, also with a chapbook. I am always willing to discuss new collaborative projects with other writers and artists.I am available to do readings and creative writing workshops, especially for those new to the writing process.

Comments from organisations or audiences

‘ Her humorous, almost misleadingly gentle performance was obviously appreciated by the audience, who were then provoked to laughter by unexpected mischievousness –“gorse is a feast, a binge/ a prick of a shrub' Jean Atkin. DGAA reviewing 2007 Poetry Double performance.

I have been extremely fortunate in the last six years to have the support and companionship of the writing group we started at the Crichton Campus of the University of Glasgow - Crichton Writers - which is an energetic,creative and completely unpretentious group, extremely diverse with many talents. We have produced five anthologies of new work and performed several readings with artists in other disciplines in our regional Arts Festival.

   also new for September 2010.....

international anthology 2010

Harvard Square Edition

In 2008 I was part of a writing group working on memoirs - not the dusty old colonel kind or the misery kind - one of the group had a chest full of family papers that she was working through. We were talking one day and she said perhaps some of the material might make a drama or a story - would I like to try ? The piece I wrote - 'Marion Terry, who might have been a singer...' is included, with her permission, in this book - all proceeds to 'Medecins Sans Frontieres'.

Contact me if you'd like a copy. 

In the last two years I've also worked in collaboration with three other Dumfries & Galloway writers - Jean Atkin, Jackie Galley and Fiona Russell - on two performance projects. The first of these was called Soundscapes for which the writers created new work in resp onse to  th e sculptures of Elizabeth Waugh and the paintings of William Spurway. The second was a commission from various organisations celebrating the fabulous Wild Goose Chase all along the Solway. for which we produced a chapbook of the texts called Goosechase. Contact me if you'd like a copy.

Stop press : 'Goosechase' has been warmly reviewd in the May 2010 issue of 'Markings' by renowned Scottish poet, Hugh McMillan, after a reading in Thomas Tosh, Cafe and Art Gallery in Thornhill.

                     Axa, our Moorish beauty

Otherwise .... I live with my husand, Richard, and spectacular black cat, Axa (above) in Powfoot, a village on the north Solway shore in Scotland. When I'm not writing I'm a keen wholefood cook - I love bread making - and I'm an early musician with our performing group The Galloway Consort which plays renaissance music in historic locations all over Scotland and the north of England.  Richard makes renaissance viols for which he has a healthy waiting list - his workshop is at the bottom of our garden and he hangs his viols on our washing line to absorb ultra violet light from the sun (see Gallery) Sometimes my writing co-incides with our music-making - I have written site-specific historic plays which have been performed with appropriate music in some wonderful locations - Whithorn Priory and Comlongan Castle and we have played often in Alnwick Castle, Edinburgh Castle, Falkland Palace, Stirling Castle and many others.

Non-writing activities which tend to spill over and be spilled over.......

 The Galloway Consort 2009