Abigail Elizabeth Ottley

Biography

Abigail Elizabeth Ottley was born into a tribe of Londoners and raised in a close and fiercely ‘respectable’ working class family. Having moved restlessly through a variety of jobs, she finally settled on teaching, arriving in Cornwall in 1984 to teach at Redruth School. After a period of life-changing illness, however, in 2004, Abigail left teaching and turned her energies to poetry. Soon, she was producing the kind of work that has culminated in Out of Eden. On the way, she has been published in close to 3oo magazines, journals and anthologies, and has enjoyed some competition success. In 2024, for example, she won the Wildfire 150 Flash Competition for the second year running and went on to place second in the Plaza International Prose Poem Competition judged by Carrie Etter. She was twice commended in The Page is Printed (Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre) and further commended in What We Inherit From Water (Yaffle Press), and the Welshpool and Dark Poets poetry competitions. In October of last year, she went on to place third in the Patricia Eschen International Poetry Award judged by Katrina Nao0mi and to win the Metro Poetry Competition on the theme of Care. Abigail is a member of Cornwall's all-female Mor Poet Collective, which has not only published three popular anthologies, Morvoren, Mordardh, and, most recently, Mordros but has also performed at events and festivals throughout Cornwall. Her work has also appeared in a number of other anthologies. Last six months, these included the Building Bridges anthology (Renard Press), What We Inherit From Water (Yaffle), Lit Shark’s Best Of 2024 Anthology (Lit Shark), One Hundred Poems for Hearing Dogs (Dream Well), and Mental Health Vol 3 (Barratt) Out of Eden, published by Mark and Gill Connors of Yaffle Press, is her debut collection. It focuses on the lives of working class women, whose stories might otherwise be lost to us: Great-Grandma Ottley, Lillian May Rogers, and the formidable Nana Tilly as well as the author’s mother, Barbara Tallett, herself both a survivor and a ‘character’. A significant aim of this collection is to keep these voices, and likewise their stories and the very different worlds they inhabited, accessible to readers today and very much ali

Links to Prizes and Awards

https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/blogs/news/metro-poetry-prize-winners?srsltid=AfmBOorVNEYCKHENCMkqBk9HnFBO5oq2oH6E_KR3E7BshaMSWKAH661X https://morrablibrary.org.uk/patricia-eschen-prize-for-poetry-2024-prize-winners/ https://theplazaprizes.com/the-plaza-prose-poetry-winners/ Wildfire 150 Competition 2024 First Prize £150 Wildfire 150 Competition ‘Remember the Air’ is a real diamond of a piece, holding a world within its page. Turning it over reveals its many facets, in turns both beautiful and disturbing. The balanced composition of this piece is equally impressive and moving, and sets a high standard for what can be done in 150 words. – Katherine Parsons. Link to text and audio https://wildfire-words.com/ff150-anthology-2024/#Remember-the-air Wildfire 150 Competition 2023 First prize £150 ‘The winner of this contest, ‘Filling In’ demonstrates a particular meticulousness with its accumulation of short sentences. The writer places small details under careful pressure, richly furnishing the character and tone of the piece. The success of the final two sentences is a testament to this, as they reach back and quietly tap into the unspoken potential of each previous line.’ - Katherine Parsons. Link to text and audio https://wildfire-words.com/ff150-anthology/

Link to Profile at Chill Subs with links to multiple samples of my work

https://www.chillsubs.com/profile/abigail_ottley

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

Blog entries by Abigail Elizabeth Ottley

'Yes, I Will Wear One' (10/07/2015)

Me in myCornwall Magazine (03/04/2015)

Blog link: https://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/abigailelizabethottley