Ilse lives and works as a veterinary surgeon in Saffron Walden. She started writing poetry seriously in 2009 after making excuses for the previous ten years and now squeezes in writing wherever she can including pulling over into laybys between house calls and in the five minutes before she falls asleep at night.. She has had poems published in Poetry News, The Compass, Artemis and Stand among others. She was shortlisted in The Rialto Nature Poetry competition in 2014 and 2015 and in the Bridport prize 2016 and commended in the Hippocrates 2017. She is the winner of the 2015 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition. Her pamphlet, The Dogs That Chase Bicycle Wheels was published by Seren in March 2016. She was recently long listed in the National Poetry Competition and is also the poet in residence at Sidmouth Folk Festival this summer. She is currently working towards a first collection.
Selected Works
Giving Voice (2019)
The poems in this anthology celebrate the human-animal bond and also complementary therapies and the place they have in the treatment of animals. The poems have been collected from veterinary surgeons and doctors but also supporters of complementary medicine and poets who feel strongly that they should have the right to choose such treatment options for the animals under their care. There are poems about, dogs, cats, horses, but also cows, a falcon and even a tortoise and most movingly a section of poems about the grief felt on losing an animal with whom we have been sharing our life.
If any members want a copy they can e-mail me direct. They are £10 plus £2 P&P, all proceeds going to CAM4Animals, an organization that promotes complementary therapies for animals.
