Valerie Laws

Biography

11 books published inc poetry collections from Peterloo, Red Squirrel, and Iron Press, also crime fiction. Creates multimedia installations for public art and creates new forms of poetry. Has performed at many festivals and events worldwide. Has performed many times in worldwide media including on BBC2 with Griff Rhys Jones, and several times on BBC Radio 4 & 3. Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival; other festivals/events include Cuisle, Limerick: Durham Book Fest: Betjeman Festival Wantage: Eigse Michael Hartnett, Co Limerick: Hull Humbermouth Fest: Hebden Bridge Fest: Off The Shelf, Sheffield: Troubadour, London: Oxford University Poetry Society: El Gouna Library, Egypt (Residency): Cornelia St Cafe, New York City: and at my many funded residencies at Scientific Institutes inc Gordon Pathology Museum in London, IAH Newcastle University, Kings College London. Infamous for spray-painting quantum physics poetry onto live sheep, funded by Arts Council and featured in worldwide media. Has 1st class degree in maths/physics and has researched biomedical science intensively.

Samples

MY MOTHER’S TWIN LOVERS ‘I must get back to the men,’ my mother announces, Then slyly meets my eye, as I choose, this time, To avoid my usual reply. ‘I know what you’re thinking!’ She’s triumphant. ‘That there’s only one of them! But You’re wrong, you know!’ My mother is having an affair. She’s cheating on my father with another man, who lives With them, looks like his twin, and even shares his name. ‘I think they must be cousins,’ she explains, defiantly. Before going to bed with my father, she slips next door, Turns back the spare bed quilt, and leaves her slippers there, So the other man won’t suspect. She has doubled her marriage, Two-timed adultery. After blameless years of barely moderation, Let alone excess in anything, she now has a surplus of husbands. It’s as if in creating my father’s double, she’s conjured up her own Wicked twin, denied a life ‘til now, when time is running short. She has gained an extra husband, while the one I had is gone, Which is fine, but now my elderly mother, with dementia, Has a more exciting sex life than I do, kicking up her heels While mine have been dragging. Perhaps it’s time, I think, As I take her home to her lovers, for me to get back to the men.

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