fiona ritchie walker

Fiona Ritchie ​Walker

Writer and Poet

Fiona Ritchie Walker is a Scots-born writer of poetry, ​short stories and flash fiction. Born in Montrose (her ​mother’s home town) she’s now based in Bournville, ​Birmingham (where her father grew up) after many ​years in NE England.

A former ​journalist...

she worked for Traidcraft, for many years, ​travelling the world to help farmers and artisans ​share how fair trade was making a difference.

Since 1999...

she has published four poetry collections and a ​pamphlet, with work widely published in ​anthologies and magazines, including New ​Writing Scotland, Mslexia, Magma, Amsterdam ​Quarterly and Postbox magazine.

Her poetry and ​fiction...

has been placed in many competitions, most recently the ​Scottish Arts Trust’s Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction, the ​Scots Poetry Prize in the Julia Budenz Commemorative ​Poetry Competition (Scottish Poetry Library) and first prize ​for poetry in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition.

She received a New Writing North Northern Promise Award, ​is a Hawthornden Fellow and has an MA in Writing Poetry ​from Newcastle University.

Click the icon to read her ​profile and first placed ​poem ‘Wumman’.

Click the icon to ​read her fist placed ​poem ‘Migration’

Publications and placing

“Mini me” - 2nd Prize, Bristol University’s Secret Life of Data

Read the published anthology here

Amsterdam Quarterly

Two poems published in Amsterdam Quarterly’s On the Move issue can be read online here

Flash Fiction

You can read or hear some of Fiona’s flash fiction here:


Selected ​poems

Lumiere Brothers’ hand-painted film c1899 – dancer unknown


All the bones of her body have gone,

replaced with the ripple of silk.

Seen, unseen.


Everything is now,

making love

to the air around her,


caressing wings billow to a fall,

flame a colour,

watch it die.


Silent music fuels every step,

free form, flying,

sculpted moments


draped over memories,

folding the past into possibilities,

layer upon layer, veiled, revealed,


transcending the stage,

not caring

if anyone is watching.


Published in The Joy of Living (Dreich)

Serpentine

Dance

The Price of ​Gutted Herring

She found it while searching for traffic news

risking taking her eyes off the road

to drift between stations, would remember

the next morning that somewhere

between Five Lane Ends and Old Man’s Bottom

Newcastle waned and Scotland conquered again.


A cheery voice told of upturned hay loads in Carmyllie,

broken lights in Bearsden and a main road closed

in Kirkintilloch, while she was heading to Catton

and Corbridge and queues on the Western Bypass


but for now, she was pulled in where the signal was strong,

head in hands, listening to the price of gutted herring

and catches unloaded everywhere north and west of there


on cobbled harbours glistening with fish scales,

where men with mobile phones and lilting voices

bid and bid again for cod and mackerel


and all the spoils of the sea that she remembered

miles inland, licking salt tears from fingers,

starting up the engine, trying to keep tuned in until

the voice faded and Radio Newcastle took over again.


Published in the The British Council’s New Writing 11 and widely anthologised.

When the aliens came, they hovered undetected

above polluted skies, took their time

recording readings, analysing day to day

activities, global change, how ancient ways

of living with nature had long ago been lost,

the friendly forms of living, travelling

diminished by human borders, senseless wars.


They saw rivers no longer nourishing the soil,

recorded rising contamination, vast hidden poisons

entering blood streams, destroying warming seas.


Sometimes they found pockets of joy, quiet goodness

happening in the midst of drawn knives, drugs and hate,

but not enough to make them explore more,

stop them from heading home.


Published in Amsterdam Quarterly

Surveillance

Taking Aim

Contact

You can contact Fiona in the following ways:




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guttedherring@email.com

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