Poet Profile

frances angela

frances angela is from the north of England. She attended a secondary modern school and at fifteen went to work in one of the town’s cotton mills. She then worked in a number of shops before training to become a social worker in residential child care and mental health. In her thirties, she became a photographer undertaking press work, portraiture, and social observation. In her late forties, she returned to the psychotherapy training of her social work years and became a psychotherapist working with children with mental health problems, disabilities, and without speech. She is now retired. In both her writing and photography she has developed an autobiographical approach.

Awards and Other Honors:

“crematorium” won the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems 2017; “the last of mother’s things packed the snow globe settles” was a runner-up poem for the Touchstone Award that same year (first published in Modern Haiku vol. 48:2 Summer 2017); Philip Street won the Snapshot Press Chapbook Award in 2018; “stacked seed trays” won second prize in the 2019 Martin Lucas Haiku Award, Presence; “my sister skating” appeared in Martin Lucas’s essay, “Haiku as Poetic Spell” in Presence, issue 41, May 2010.

Books Published:

Philip Street, collection of haiku and haibun, Snapshot Press, 2018; Day Out, one-line haiku collection, Otata’s Bookshelf, 2019. A number of her poems have been included in the Red Moon Anthologies over the years.

garden party
light rain falls
in to mother’s gin

crematorium
the sound of someone
unwrapping flowers

august heat the carpet fitter re-braids her hair

my sister skating here comes her yellow hat

mother’s bedroom he empties out his loose change

till next summer blackbird song

Credits:

“garden party” - Mayfly issue 37 and The Red Moon Anthology “tug of the current”, 2004; “crematorium” - Acorn Issue 36, Spring 2016 and Touchstone Award, 2017; “august heat” Blithe Spirit 18:2, 2008 and The Red Moon Anthology “white lies”, 2008; “my sister skating” - Presence, issue 41, May 2010; “mother’s bedroom: - Modern Haiku vol. 52:2 Summer 2021; “till next summer” - The Heron’s Nest Vol. XXVI:1, March 2024.