Elizabeth Holloway

Dr Elizabeth Holloway (formerly Elizabeth Barrett) is an award-winning poet whose work has been published extensively in journals and anthologies. She is the author of four full-length collections of poetry. Her first book Walking on Tiptoe (Staple, 1998) focuses, in part, on the diagnosis of her son as autistic. Elizabeth received an Arts Council of England New Writers’ award to support the completion of her follow-up collection, The Bat Detector (Wrecking Ball Press, 2005), which continues to explore the experience of parenting an autistic child. In the collection, Elizabeth uses the metaphor of detecting bats to understand the process of communicating with a non-verbal child. The collection led to a collaboration with the violist Robin Ireland who composed original music for a sequence of the poems. Subsequent collections include Walking on Tiptoe and Other Poems (Bluechrome Press, 2007) and A Dart of Green and Blue (Arc Publications, 2010). In 2018, Elizabeth received a Northern Writers award to support work on her future collection, Falling Mother.

Elizabeth has worked as a writer in a variety of settings including schools, community organisations, a prison and radio. She has performed her work at literary events and festivals and between 2000 and 2005 was co-editor of Staple, a journal of poetry and short fiction. Elizabeth worked as a University Lecturer in Education for over thirty years, during which time she developed a special interest in supporting students’ academic writing. Elizabeth also contributes to autism awareness via a range of professional and academic platforms including a blog, dylanandliz.wordpress.com.

I started writing poetry in 1992 after attending a short course at a local arts centre. The tutor recommended that we read widely, learn from practising writers, and join a local group. This turned out to be good advice: my first collection of poems, Walking on Tiptoe, was published in 1998. Thirty years later, I continue to think of these three practices – reading widely, expert guidance, and community support – as key to my continuing development. These principles also underpin the Reading Round Programme, which I am delighted to be part of.

Before joining the Reading Round Programme, I was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Prior to that, I worked as a lecturer in education for 30 years, while maintaining a freelance career as poet and editor. During this time I published four poetry collections:  Walking on Tiptoe (Staple First Editions, 1998); The Bat Detector (Wrecking Ball, 2005); Walking on Tiptoe and Other Poems (Bluechrome Press, 2007) and A Dart of Green and Blue (Arc Publications, 2010). A fifth collection, Falling Mother, is forthcoming.

My work is widely published in magazines and anthologies and I have performed at national literary festivals and events. Between 2000 and 2005, I edited Staple magazine of poetry and short fiction. I ran reading and writing events in the community and was writer-in-residence on local BBC Radio and in schools and a prison. I also worked as a creative writing tutor at the Institute of Lifelong Learning at the University of Sheffield, designing and delivering poetry and short fiction courses for the public. I received an Arts Council of England Writers’ Award in 2000 and a Northern Writers Award in 2018.

My first three poetry collections are preoccupied with the experience of living with and caring for someone who is autistic, while later collections address the death of my mother and disappearance of a teenage daughter. My current project is a memoir in which the narrator reflects on a troubled father-daughter relationship while walking long-distance trails in Yorkshire, Northumberland and Cumbria. While I continue to explore themes from my earlier work, the primary focus is on the fracture of a working class family, set against the backdrop of the decline of the coal industry and the 1984 miners’ strike.