Emily Wills
I grew up in Cornwall, have worked in Malawi, and now live in Gloucestershire where I work part time as a GP.
My second collection, Developing the Negative was published by the The Rialto in November 2008.
Diverting the Sea, my first collection, was published in 2000, also by The Rialto.
I was shortlisted for the 2012 Manchester Poetry Prize.
Island won the 2012 Frogmore Poetry Prize.
Anorexia won the 2010 Lisa Thomas Poetry Prize.
In the Troubadour Poetry Competition Domestic and Confessional was commended in 2010, and Something Almost Being Said in 2008.
My poems have appeared in magazines including Acumen, Anon, Iota, Magma, Other Poetry, Quattrocentro, Seam, Smiths Knoll, Staple, The Frogmore Papers, The North, The Rialto, The Warwick Review and in anthologies.
The Recipe for Marmalade was broadcast on Radio 4.
Prefabs has been translated into German and Romanian, see Poetry Trend.
Chemistry was the ‘Poem of the Week’ at the Old School Coffee Shop Grosmont, North Yorkshire.
I am an experienced poetry tutor and enjoy facilitating group workshops. I am also available for readings. Please contact me to discuss your ideas and requirements.
Reviews of Developing the Negative
“Emily Wills' first book, Diverting the Sea, was noticed for the way in which her poems look into ordinary things and find their strangeness. This new collection is even more remarkable, in this way and in others. Her poems have a studied informality, and natural good manners; they approach the reader gently and courteously, but very often the after-effect is powerful and even startling. She is highly intelligent, both scientifically and philosophically — a rare combination these days; and her acute knowledge of the things of this world, its quiddity, is also touched with magic. Her work should be much better known than it is.”
“I have always enjoyed Emily Wills’ poems, but this new collection marks a very important move forward from her earlier work. It’s economical, exact, exciting writing, and I found that once I began reading I simply couldn’t put it down. Her professional voice has integrated more resonantly now with her voice as a poet, and this new range of reference has given a depth and force to her writing. Her poems are strong and very well-crafted: she has important things to say, and she says them freshly and memorably. This is a collection that will make you think — and it will also give great pleasure.”
“These poems are distinguished by the delicacy of the voice and the mastery of craft.”
Andrew Forster, Other Poetry
“This is a more measured and yet more joyful collection than her first, Diverting the Sea. The title poem has ‘low sun’ and ‘uncut fields’... ‘pale forgetting words’: four stanzas, seemingly simple, yet humming with the unsaid...Wills has a knack of connecting two disparate things, making you see both in a fresh way.”
Kath McKay, The North
See more reviews on the Reviews page
Please contact me via email Emily Wills
