Heidi Williamson a Finalist for the City of Literature Award 2026
'Heidi Williamson, poet and Writing for Life Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, running community reading and writing sessions.'
Heidi Williamson is one of five finalists for the City of Literature Award 2026 (East Anglian Book Awards). The City of Literature Award recognises an individual or organisation whose work has had significant positive impact on the literary ecosystem of East Anglia.
The winner will be chosen by public vote (open to residents of Eastern England) and will be announced at the East Anglian Book Awards celebration evening on Thursday 11 February 2027 at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich. Voting details here. Voting closes at 10am on Saturday 12 December 2026.
Tickets are available for the Awards celebration evening at Dragon Hall in Norwich. Further details and booking here.
INTERVIEWS & PODCASTS WITH HEIDI WILLIAMSON
An in-depth interview with Heidi Williamson is featured in the arts magazine MONK. She spoke to writer Christopher James about grief and the shifting meaning of time and place.
Read here.
Heidi Williamson was intervewed by poet John Greening for the Royal Literary Fund podcast. It went online in January 2021, but recorded two years before that. She spoke in detail about her second collection The Print Museum, and more generally about the importance of pattern in writing poems, her need to surprise herself and her new collection drawing on a painful section of public and personal history (Return by Minor Road - from 17:00) - listen here.
Heidi was in conversation with poet Rebecca Goss about on poetry, memory and healing for the National Centre for Writing's Writing Through Place podcast of 7 October 2024. Heidi was talking about and reading from Return by Minor Road. Listen here.
Heidi Williamson reads her poem 'Place' from Return by Minor Road
Heidi Williamson reading her Plough Prize-winning poem from Return by Minor Road (Bloodaxe Books, June 2020)
In May 2020 Heidi Williamson won the 2019 Plough International Poetry Prize for ‘With a rootless lily held in front of him’, a poem from Return by Minor Road.
POETRY BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2020 & 2021
'This is a book of remembrance; of trauma and grief. It's a powerful and personal reckoning with the events that took place at a primary school in Dunblane in 1996. But it's also a book of hope, healing and consolation, vividly drawn landscapes, and mirrors and echoes in nature.' – Christopher James, The Poetry Society (Poetry Books of 2021)
‘… I’d like to mention one book which moved me to tears, Return by Minor Road, by Heidi Williamson: a stunning and heart-breaking look at the Dunblane massacre, the way grief can infuse a place, and what the aftermath (in the literal sense of the beginnings of a new growth) of such an event feels like in such a close-knit community.’ – Andrew McMillan, Outspoken (Books of the Year 2020)
REVIEWS OF RETURN BY MINOR ROAD
‘This is a book of remembrance, of trauma and grief, but also one of hope, healing and consolation… Return by Minor Road feels like a major achievement. Brilliantly constructed, each poem feels complete in itself, while contributing to a greater whole… A work of vivid phrase-making and lyrical empathy, it is by turns, a celebration of our spirit, a forensic examination of the soul, and a warning of the darkness that lives at the edges of our lives.’ – Christopher James
'The final poem, ' Place', poses the question: how much of a place do you ever really leave and how much do you end up taking with you? For many of us, myself included, we will never forget Dunblane. This is a fitting tribute to those whose lives were tragically cut short at such a tender age.' – Neil Leadbeater, Write Out Loud
'Love of the natural world and love of family – especially youth – resonates through this quietly convincing collection which manages to take on its daunting subject matter and emerge, not victorious of course, but having argued on behalf of resilience, on the side of hope.' – Martyn Crucefix
'Beautifully crafted and understated, yet deeply moving, Return by Minor Road – Heidi Williamson’s third poetry collection – reflects on trauma, survival and hope, as it makes connections between natural landscape, wildlife and tragedy.' – Jennifer Wong, Ambit
‘Heidi Williamson’s third collection, Return by Minor Road, is less a revisiting of the Dunblane Primary School shooting, than a sensitive and subtle reflection on the culverts and rivers within the human body that carry the past. Through a lexicon that is coloured by Scottish inflections… and a sense of place etched through the vocabulary of return… Williamson weaves her delicate sonata of loss, upheaval and natural resilience.’ – Abigail Ardelle Zammit, London Grip
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POEM FEATURE
Carol Rumens featured 'The rain in the night' from Return by Minor Road as her Poem of the Week in The Guardian of 8 March 2021 to mark the anniversary of the Dunblane tragedy. Read here.
'The poems in Return By Minor Road are restrained, but, over the whole volume, their rain-like effect is cumulatively powerful.' – Carol Rumens, Poem of the Week, The Guardian
[28 October 2026]
