Claire Williamson

Claire Williamson is an award-winning poet and creative writer. Her latest poetry collection, Visiting the Minotaur (Seren, 2018), was a National Poetry Day recommendation for book groups. With themes that touch on family and identity, Claire has published a number of other collections, including Split Ends (Eyewear, 2016), The Soulwater Pool (Poetry Can, 2008) and Ride On (PoTA Press, 2005). In 2017, she was highly commended in the Bridport prize by Lemn Sissay for her poem ‘Rough’.

Claire’s programme leadership for the Masters in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes at Metanoia Institute (supporting students to find their voices in various ways for ten years) has prepared her for the role of Royal Literary Fellow. Claire has worked extensively in a range of settings including addiction recovery, profound disability and cancer care; at Southmead Hospital she facilitates expressive writing groups for Fresh Arts. Working with Welsh National Opera and the composer, Mark Lawrence, Claire writes the lyrics for community-based projects, often intergenerationally, with themes ranging from dementia awareness to commemoration of the outbreak and armistice of World War I.

In 2024 Claire will complete her doctoral studies in Creative and Critical writing at Cardiff University on the theme of narrative responses to grief, for which she has written a novel, The Scarab Bookshop (yet to be submitted for publication). Claire lives on the Welsh/English border in Chepstow with her two daughters and Marty, the ‘almost’ Border Collie.