Elizabeth Rimmer
Poet, Editor and Translator
Poetry which explores the human relationship with place and environment through interaction with plants, and the multi-dimensional learning associated with herbs.
Elizabeth Rimmer’s poems are rooted where human and non-human meet, among ghosts of druids, discarded vodka bottles. Amid meditations on wren, bats and boisterous fox, the music of Kurt Cobain and Martyn Bennett resonates. A hymn, countering contemporary authoritarian language and monoculture, contrasts with a tenth century herbalist text, translated by Rimmer herself. Alive with ghosts and memories, these poems hold layered, deeper meanings. They are invocations and prayers locating the mystical in the wisdom of quiet places, among hawthorn, cleavers, couchgrass, plantain and nettle, offering the possibility of deep healing, of hope.
Jay Whittaker
Whether crafting an intimate, pithy poem about a pebble or tackling an ambitious sequence on social and ecological collapse, Elizabeth Rimmer writes in language that's all at once sensuous, precise and elegant.
Susan Richardson
All these careful noticings, of plants, vegetables, birds, geographies of actual place and tentative emotional uncovering, accumulate gently to a book that teaches unobtrusively a sharp sustained attention.
Alan Riach
#PlacePlantsPoetry
Latest News
-
Launch Events for Comrades of Dark Night![]()
Come and listen! My first reading will be at St Bride's Church Hall, 21 Greenlees Road Cambuslang G72 8JB, at 2.30 on 7th May. There will be music as well as poetry from me and Anne Connolly, tea and cake!The second one will be at St Mungo's Mirrorball, in Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street...
-
New Poetry CollectionMy next full collection of poetry, Comrades of Dark Night will come out in May 2026. Like my previous work it is grounded in the awareness of my locality. In recording the processes of connecting with a new home and different landscape, it deals with questions of displacement and alienation, haunt...
-
World Poetry DayOn 21st March it is World Poetry Day. Thanks to the lovely people in charge there, I will be in Cambuslang Library at 11 o'clock to talk about my poetry. I'll read a few poems, including some from the new book - due out in March next year - and I'll have books to sell.
It would be wonderful to s...
-
Poetry Workshop - Leaf SupportWriter performer and educator Susan Richardson and I are collaborating to offer a poetry workshop on the themes raised by human interactions with plants. Susan will focus on houseplants, and I will consider the wild plants we can find in our locality.
The original workshop was schedued for 18th A...
-
New Collection coming 2026
My next full collection of poetry, working title The Midsummer Foxes will come out in March 2026.