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
-
Cover Art for Comrades of Dark Night
Dumfries-based artist Hugh Bryden who created the beautiful Charms for the Healing of Grief bracelet box, has very kindly given permission for the use of this image for the cover of Comrades of Dark Night.
The first launch events are being organised for May - the first is
2.30 7th May at St Brid... -
Poetry Workshop - Leaf SupportNews of an upcoming workshop - online!
-
Highlights of the Coming YearIf you have been waiting for news about the new book, I am sorry to have to tell you that the launch of Comrades of Dark Night has been rescheduled to May. However, this will now be in conjunction with the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the founding of [Red Squirrel Press.]() In an era wher...
-
New Poetry Collection
My 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...
-
Charms for the Healing of GriefThe big news this week is that the manuscript of Comrades of Dark Night is finished and away to the publisher for consideration. All being well it will be out in May, and there will be a lot of promotion posts over the next few months, with news of launch events and readings and so on as details bec...