Helen Lamb
Born1956
Died27 March 2017
NationalityScottish
GenrePoetry, Short stories, Fiction
Notable awardsScotland on Sunday Women 2000 Prize
PartnerChris Powici

Helen Lamb (1956-27 March 2017) was an award-winning Scottish poet and short story writer who also worked with the cancer caring Maggie's Centres in the Forth Valley promoting the role of writing in well-being.[1]

Personal life

Lamb was a writer, educator, mother and grandmother [2] who lived in Dunblane with Chris Powici,[3] who is also a poet, former editor of literary magazine Northwords and a teaching fellow at the University of Stirling.

Career

Her poetry has been published in literary journals and in the joint anthology Strange Fish[4] along with fellow poet Magi Gibson. She also published a short story collection entitled Superior Bedsits and many of her stories were broadcast on radio.[5] Her work has been featured in other general anthologies[1] and she was one of the writers included in Working Words: Scottish creative writing, which was designed to promote creative writing in schools.[6] Her poem "Spell of the Bridge" was one of those reproduced on a postcard for National Poetry Day in 2007.[7] Lamb worked at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, tutoring in creative writing.[1] As well as working with cancer charity Maggie's Centres, Lamb also worked with adult survivors of childhood abuse, editing anthologies of their writings.[1] She died suddenly in 2017 shortly after finishing her first novel Three Kinds of Kissing,[8] described by fellow author Tracey Emerson as "a subtly devastating wonder".[9]

Awards

Lamb won the Scotland on Sunday/Women 2000 prize for her story "Long Grass, Moon City".

Publications

Examples of Helen Lamb's poetry can be found in the Scottish Poetry Library and on their website: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/website.

Works

  • Strange Fish (1997), with Magi Gibson
  • Superior Bedsits : and other stories (Polygon 2001)
  • Three Kinds of Kissing (2018)

Anthologies

  • Original prints : New writing from Scottish women. Vol. 4. (1992)
  • Working words / Valerie Thornton. (1995)
  • Different boundaries / edited by Barbara Weightman and Elsie MacRae. (1995)
  • Last things first / edited by A.L. Kennedy and James McGonigal. (1995)
  • After the Watergaw : a collection of new poetry from Scotland inspired by water / edited by Robert Davidson. (1998)
  • Friends and kangaroos / edited by Moira Burgess and Donny O'Rourke. (1999)
  • Across the water : Irishness in modern Scottish writing / edited by James McGonigal, Donny O'Rourke & Hamish Whyte. (2000)
  • Going up Ben Nevis in a bubble car / edited by Moira Burgess and Janet Paisley. (2001)
  • Milking the haggis / edited by Valerie Thornton and Hamish Whyte. (2004)
  • The Edinburgh book of twentieth-century Scottish poetry / edited by Maurice Lindsay and Lesley Duncan. (2005)
  • The thing that mattered most : Scottish poems for children / edited by Julie Johnstone. (2006)
  • The dynamics of balsa / edited by Liz Niven and Brian Whittingham. (2007)
  • Bucket of frogs / edited by Liz Niven and Brian Whittingham. (2008)
  • Songs of other places / edited by Gerry Cambridge and Zoë Strachan. (2014)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Helen Lamb". The Royal Literary Fund. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  2. "Helen". The Grantidote. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  3. "Chris Powici | Poet". Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  4. Gibson, Magi (1997). Strange fish. Lamb, Helen. Glasgow: Duende. ISBN 1-900537-03-6. OCLC 46333149.
  5. Lamb, Helen (2001). Superior bedsits, and other stories. Edinburgh: Polygon. ISBN 0-7486-6306-1. OCLC 49894371.
  6. Thornton, Valerie (1995). Working words. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-61870-1. OCLC 33188219.
  7. "National Poetry Day 2007 Archives". Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  8. Lamb, Helen (2018). Three kinds of kissing. Glasgow, Scotland: Vagabond Voices. ISBN 1-908251-91-3. OCLC 1048095478.
  9. "Three Kinds of Kissing". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
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