About me

I am a trained teacher, a writer and I currently work for my family business marketing our wonderful self-catering properties on our organic farm. I am also an Associate Tutor at the University of Edinburgh. I have taught most age ranges including adults. I have also written, presented and facilitated training.

I recently completed my Postgraduate Diploma in Learning for Sustainability (Distinction). A combination of Environmental Education and Outdoor Education. I am based in the Scottish Borders, where I live on a hill farm that I grew up on. Life has taken me to some different places to live, Edinburgh, London, Melbourne and Prague but these hills of Scotland always seemed to call me back.

I had always written as small child and young adult, mainly for pleasure, sometimes for wellbeing. I loved poetry as a child. I can still recite Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson, I adored his poetry book and would pour over it night after night. As a teenager I devoured all kinds of poetry from Plath to Cope and as a young women Margaret Atwood in all her amazing-ness. I read enormous amounts especially as a teenager, leaving on a farm means you tend to be alone a lot and I found friends and adventures in books. I can still remembers favourites very clearly like Empty World by John Christopher.

However, when I was a young adult life started getting in the way, my confidence in my writing plummeted and the routes open to me, such as the University newspaper didn’t appeal. So I stopped, and then juddered my way through the next 20 years, writing bits here and there.

Finally in middle age I have come back to writing it, and sharing it. It’s been an adventure getting here, but over the last year I have been published online and in print and have two small chapbooks to my name.

I have now been published in numerous anthologies and journals both online and in print, such as by Forest Publishing, Nine Pens Press, HydridDreich, Hedgehog Poetry press. Also Dodging the Rain, The Honest Ulster Man, One Hand Clapping, DawnTreader, Eye Flash Poetry, Selcouth Station, Fragmented Voices and Foxglove Journal. I was shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award in 2020 & 2021, and Shorlisted for the Eversham Festival of Words Micro Flash Fiction Comp 2021.

My Slim Pamphlet Mind Mathematics published by hybridDreich was released in June 2021, and my debut full pamphlet Carbon was released in early 2022 by Hedgehog Poetry Press, and poetry memoir was released by Selcouth Station in July 2022 Wild Chamomile.

I am currently working on two children’s books that hope to help children love the place they live, to see magic and wonder in urban as well as more natural environments. Ivy’s Magical Mission will be published by Stairwell Books in 2022.

Elisabeth Kelly MA (Hons), PGDE, PG Dip LfS