Poet with talent in spades
I wrote my first poem when I was 11. It was about a horse galloping across a beach at sunset and I felt excited when my Dad had it typed by his secretary at work to show off to people – my first time in print! Since then I have published hundreds of poems and stories in literary magazines and anthologies, in print and online, and have won prizes for my poems in several national and international poetry competitions.
In 2006 I enrolled on a Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University and my pamphlet, First Blood, came out that year. I was a member of Lippy Bissoms, four female poetry pals, who took their cabaret-style poetry show to the Edinburgh Fringe, with the mission of celebrating the female experience and ‘telling it like it is’. Large audiences of women (and the odd man) lapped it up!
In 2013 I published my first full-length poetry collection, Fabulous Beast, with Freight Books in Glasgow – ‘a moving, enjoyable book that resonates with a universal humanity’, ‘a highly accomplished collection…a significant achievement’, ‘Patricia Ace’s witty, distinctive and unashamedly female voice offers a breath of fresh air’, ‘Ace is a poet with talent in spades…An indefatigable chimera of a book’.
In the same year I was partnered with Edinburgh artist and print-maker, Lindy Furby, in the Written Image project (Scottish Poetry Library and Edinburgh Printmakers). We made a selection of haiku postcards, displayed as ‘Wee Galleries’, and available as individual prints. These were exhibited at two locations in Edinburgh and at the ‘In the Garden with Friends’ exhibition, curated by Katy Galbraith, at The Bield in Perthshire in April 2014.
I have always enjoyed collaborating with other artists and responding to visual media such as paintings, photography and film. In February 2017 I took part in the Poetry School’s commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, writing and performing in ‘Somme Suite’, a collaboration of 10 poets from across Britain commissioned to respond to the 1916 documentary film, The Battle of the Somme.
I write mainly about relationships – birth, ageing, love, separation, death, transitions and renewal – but also about the natural world and spirituality. In my other life I’m a yoga teacher, married and the mother of two grown-up daughters.
Email: patriciaace@hotmail.com
In the Garden with Friends 