Site undergoing revamp – bear with me while I move / delete / add  / update info: thank you!

Autumn 2025

 Braid: new 40 page pamphlet responding to the whole Braid Burn watercourse from its mouth onto Portobello Beach to its sources in the Pentland Hills. It forms part of a complex and beautiful multi-artist / multi-artform publication, in response to a complex & beautiful socially engaged walk project in 2023.  Also features : artwork by Sarah Gittins and creative non-fiction by Sandy Bennett-Haber, Ewan Davidson, Tamsin Grainger and the late David Gee, plus haiku by James Spence and participant contributions. With big thanks to  ArtWalkPorty for their commission and curator Jonathan Baxter. Available from Art Walk Publications or me.

Fri 12 Sept 4pm, mouth of Figgate Burn, Portobello Beach, Edinburgh.     I’m really looking forward to launching, on an incoming tide, and as part of  ArtWalkPorty, Braid – a new 40-pg sequence 

Sat 13 Sept 2-3.30pm Writing for Wellbeing – Live Lit workshop at Hub351, Juniper Green, Edinburgh

Sat 25 Oct 4pm: Biggar Little Festival.  In aid of  Hugh MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank. Reading alongside former StAnza director Eleanor Livingstone, HappenStance Press editor Nell Nelson, The Dark Horse editor Gerry Cambridge, Dave Costello, James McGonigal.

Spring-Summer 2025

Fife Contemporary / NEUK Collective, In Tension, online exhibition, launching 29 May

Five Walks, Five Trees, Five Poems with ArtWalkPorty

Introduction

Helen Boden BA PhD grew up on the edge of the Yorkshire Pennines, and lives on the edge of the Pentland Hills outside Edinburgh, Scotland. She is a writer, editor and socially engaged artist, with a longstanding interest in the relationship between wellbeing, walking and creativity. A widely published poet, she also blogs on this site, and writes creative non-fiction and articles on subjects ranging from education to hillwalking. In addition to degrees in English Literature, she holds certificates Counselling Skills and in Mindfulness. She is a professional member of the Society of Authors and National Association of Writers in Education, and is neurodivergent..

Her début poetry collection A Landscape To Figure In was published by Red Squirrel Press in November 2021 and selected for Scottish Book Trust / Creative Scotland Debut Lab 2022

She also makes place-specific work and collaborates with visual artists to write responsive poems for artists’ books and pamphlets. She has recently featured in anthologies to mark the centenaries of Edwin Morgan’s and George Mackay Brown’s births, the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, the relationship of geology and poetry, and the Covid-19 era.

As well as print, her work spans digital, exhibition and performance formats, and has featured at festivals including StAnza, Pittenweem and Push the Boat Out. 

She has extensive experience of presenting on poetry & place, including for: BBC Radio, Universities of Manchester and Strathclyde, Cycling UK,  Refugee Survival Trust, Historic Scotland, National Galleries Scotland. 

A former lecturer in English & Scottish Literature at Edinburgh University, she has worked as an  independent Literature Professional since 2003,  facilitating creative writing activities across a broad range of community, healthcare, educational, cultural and environmental settings. Particular interests include writing and visual art, and site-specific ‘writing in place’ / writing outdoors. She specialises in socially-engaged arts education for adults, and offers tutoring, mentoring and reading / editorial services for individual clients. Please see the relevant pages for more information, and the following professional profiles:

Scottish Poetry Library – click on my name or pic:

Helen Boden

Scottish Book Trust: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/helen-boden

Recent Events Archive

Autumn 2024

Helen has just returned from her first visit to West Yorkshire in a decade and first time back in the Dales since the pandemic – and first time to either as a neuroqueer poet of place. She’s making new work from this perspective 

Scottish Poetry Library: Reading with Laura Fyfe & Friends 27 Nov

Summer 2024

Vessel, ArtWalkPorty  – featuring poems from Helen’s new sequence from the 2023  Braid Walk 

Wee Gaitherin, Stonehaven, 2 August

Winter-Spring 23-24

In November Helen’s poem ‘In Surburbia (ii): Some Ways of Looking at Blossom’ was selected  by Scottish Poetry Library and former National Poet of Wales Ifor ap Glyn as one of twenty Best Scottish Poems published last year. 

Following the success of this summer’s The Braid Walk project, Helen is putting finishing touches to a new sequence responding to the whole watercourse and catchment area, present and past. She is also co-editing participant work from the walks for an exciting new cross-artform publication with ArtWalkPorty.    

Facilitation and other activities include events for Book Week Scotland, workshops for The State Hospital Carstairs, and a third poetry and cycling event  for the amazing Woodland Wheels Cycles.

Spring-Summer 2023

Helen is co-facilitating, with Jonathan Baxter, Sarah Gittens and James P Spence, The Braid Walk project for ArtWalkPorty – walking upstream from the source of the Figgate Burn in Portobello-mouth of Bonaly Burn in the Pentlands, braiding poetry, art and ecology.

Readings and Events 2023:

ArtWalkPorty   2 September

Edinburgh Bookshop, 13 July

Lovecrumbs, 26 May