Valerie BenceAn ex-librarian and researcher, Valerie finished a doctorate in her mid-fifties. Wondering if she had an imagination, she moved from academic to creative writing, completing a Poetry MA at Manchester Met University's Writing School in 2017. A year's entoring with an independent press followed. She works mainly with artworks but writes ekphrastic poems in its broadest sense, encompassing not just objects but truth, memory, place and time. Time is an especially powerful focus and she finds that using memory or writing on significant anniversaries in real time brings another dimension to the writing process. Her poems have been published in Now then!, Bare Fiction, Cambridge Notes Special Edition on Ekphrasis and in Arachne Press, Commonword and Poetry School anthologies. She was shortlisted for the Poetry School Primers scheme in 2018 and longlisted for Gingko and the Fish Poetry prize in 2019. She has worked on projects with the British Museum, Chelsea Fringe, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. Her first collection Falling in love with a dead man (poems sourced in Rembrandt artworks) was published in 2019 by Cinnamon Press. He has become a 'muse' and as she has him tattoo'd on her arm, he is always with her! Valerie has three children, two grandchildren and lives and works in Bucks. She is trying to stay sane in isolation, with varying degrees of success....and would like an emergency dog! Read More Read Less