When the Grass Dances

VALERIE GILLIES has composed poetry since the age of fourteen. A former Edinburgh Makar, Royal Literary Fellow and an Associate of Harvard University, Valerie has been a literary arts practitioner in psychiatric and general hospitals with Artlink and a Writer in Residence in universities and libraries. She co-facilitated the creative writing workshops at Maggie’s Centre, Edinburgh, for sixteen years, and has been a trainer with Lapidus Scotland.Her many collections include Tweed Journey, following the River Tweed from source to sea, and The Spring Teller, poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs. Her work always explores the healing potential of its environment, and this has an invigorating effect upon the reader.REBECCA MARR was born in the Highlands and she has had a darkroom since childhood. She studied photography at Napier University Edinburgh. She moved to Orkney in 2007 for a Pier Arts Centre artist residency 'Art & Agriculture' working with farmers, and settled there. Rebecca works across digital and traditional darkroom techniques. Her subjects have included clouds, seaweed, Orkney’s wild flowers and of course the grasses. She has contributed to over twenty publications, including several collaborations with archaeologist Mark Edmonds. She works with her husband Mark Jenkins on museum and community heritage projects.Valerie & Rebecca first met in the mid-nineties, brought together by artist Kirsty Lorenz to run creative workshops with Artlink at The Royal Edinburgh psychiatric hospital. They have continued their friendship and support for each other over the years. Men & Beasts, a touring exhibition and publication in 2000, was their first collaboration. Two decades on, they embarked on a 5 year study of the wild grasses of Scotland.

A celebration of greenery in its many wondrous forms and in every changeable season from rushes to sedge, wild oats to hemp—and we find it shivering with life and beauty. This is florilegium as devotional text, a botanical catalogue of great artistic ambition.CAL FLYN, WriterThe diversity of grasses is so important and is being remembered just as it's being lost. I loved this beautiful collaborationAMY LIPTROT, WriterThere's a lot to enjoy and it's not to be rushed, informative as well as a joy to the senses.ELEANOR MACLEOD, RangerFull of everyday riches. I will try to overcome my plant blindness, and look not at grass, but the grasses!KEN COCKBURN, Poet and translatorThe collaboration is utterly beautiful. The two are equal partners and symbiotic. Each is augmented by the other and converses with it.JOHN GLENDAY, PoetIt's a delightful and deep curation, a reverence indeed.ROB MCGUIRE, PoetA luminous shaft of hope.RISSA DE LA PAZ, FacilitatorI cannot see Carex echinata without these lines popping into my head!JOHN CROSSLEY, Botanist