PALEWELL PRESS

Helen Boyles is a writer and educator whose love of literature and the natural environment has shaped her career choices and recreational interests. She taught English language and literature for many years at Secondary and Further Education Level, and for the last 20 years has lectured in Humanities with the Open University. She has a Master’s degree and PhD in 18th and early 19th-century English Literature, focusing in the latter on creative and religious ‘enthusiasm’ and their sometimes problematic relationship in writings from the Romantic era. This resulted in a book published by Routledge in 2017.

Currently she is exploring further the relationship between creativity and ‘wild’ walking in female writers from the same period. This chimes with her own love of long-distance walking, where nature and the reflection it inspires is a source of fulfilment on many levels.

Helen has had two collections: Catching Light (2016) and Transitions (2017) published by Indigo Dreams, with poems also printed in journals and anthologies. During 2019 her work appeared in a collection of award-winning poems by the Edward Thomas Fellowship; and her piece on the burning of Notre Dame was translated into French and published in the January 2020 edition of Notre Dame’s Oecumenisme Informations.

Helen is Co-Chair of the Devon-based Moor Poets, helping to promote and develop poetic talent in regular workshops based in and around Dartmoor. The Moor Poets are developing creative collaborations with local artists – a rewarding way of engaging with the environment and exploring its richness.

In June 2021, Palewell Press will publish Helen's third collection, Balancing the Elements