The poet & the collections
Mary Thomson is a Renfrewshire based writer and poet. Born in Cheshire, she spent her childhood on a farm but her working life in Yorkshire was spent in the arts as a curator, critic, gallery owner and writer of art interpretation. Before she moved to Scotland in 2006, she collaborated with artists, gave readings and ran writing workshops relating to exhibitions.
She has published three collections of her poems and also makes small handmade books of individual poems embellished with her own photographs. In 2009 she exhibited at By Leaves We Live at the Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh and at the Scottish Pamphlet Poetry event at the National Library of Scotland. So far in 2010 she has exhibited at the Scottish International Artists Bookfair in Glasgow and the Edinburgh International Book Festival with the Scottish Pamphlet Poetry group (right). She will again be at “By Leaves We Live” on September 25th and the Ilkley Literature Festival on October 2nd.
STORIES is a collection of recent poems. Some obliquely celebrate the love story that brought the poet from Yorkshire to Scotland, others her abiding pleasure in landscape and the natural world as metaphors for human creativity. Handmade and stitched, printed on art papers, signed. £5
HEARTWOOD is a recently made collection of poems written for the exhibition Secret Life of Trees which took place in North Yorkshire in 2002 in which a painter, photographer, sculptor and the poet celebrated trees of significance to them, in particular a venerable Nidderdale oak. Handmade and stitched, printed on art papers, signed. £5
AT THE MARGINS (as Mary Sara) published by Hawksworth Art in 2003. A collection culled from over 20 years writing – and a celebration of Nidderdale. Signed. ISBN 0-9544521-1-9 £5
Click the images to see a poem from each collection:
