Ways of Speech

Anne Pilling began to write poetry full time in 2004 and won the Smith/Doorstop competition in 2008 with her pamphlet Growing Pains. In the same year Arrowhead published her first collection, Home Field. Indigo Dreams published The Dancing Sailors in 2011 and Ground Cover in 2015.

She has won prizes and been commended in numerous competitions. Prizes have been awarded to her in the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition, the Faber/Ottaker Competition, the Jack Clemo Poetry Competition, the Poetry Business Competition, the Torbay Poetry Competition, the Troubadour International Competition and the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition. In addition her poems have won commendations at Bridport and Teignmouth and (twice) in the National Poetry Competition.

Her work has been published widely in magazines including, Acumen, Envoi, The North, Resource, Scintilla, Smiths Knoll, Staple and Yorkshire Journal. She lives in the Yorkshire Dales which she describes as ‘the country of my heart’.

‘Ann Pilling’s poems have the precision gained in a life-time of professional writing, the particular glow of long-treasured memories, and the passion of long-stored speech.’ – Kate Clanchy

‘Through childhood, loss and living, these poems carry the reader with them, through pain, through the warmth and wisdom of their final lines.’ – Alison Brackenbury

‘These are poems of great poise and insight; to quote Edwin Muir, they are written with ‘a mixture of enjoyment and hard work’. Here..we see a poet who can distinguish between the true and false, an exhilarating and achieved voice.’ – Penelope Shuttle