Heidi Williamson

Winner of the Poetry Category, 2016 East Anglian Book Awards

Winner of the Book by the Cover award, 2016 East Anglian Book Awards

In her second collection, printer’s daughter Heidi Williamson mines the rich language and history of printing to consider themes of belonging, parenthood, love, and how we communicate, and fail to communicate, with each other.

Individual, familial and cultural inheritance is explored – through subjects ranging from Gutenberg to Gill, Kindles, Twitter, ultrasounds, the death of Diana, 3D printing, climate change, childlessness, genes, and what is downloadable.

By turns sensual, playful, and stark, The Print Museum collects exhibits and fragments from this fading industrial art and displays them alongside pieces driven by the same forces of longing, loss, transformation and delight.

‘Courageous and moving.’ – Briony Bax, Judge (Poetry), 2016 East Anglian Book Awards, on the winning collection The Print Museum

‘Heidi’s collection works beautifully, drawing extensively on the art of printing both for its own sake as a fascinating subject in itself but also as a metaphor for wider topics… an engaging collection which acts as a kind of love letter to a sadly dying craft.’ – Trevor Heaton, Eastern Daily Press [on The Print Museum]

'It is these moments of stillness in Williamson’s writing, of stasis and contemplation, of sadness and such beauty, that make her poems unforgettable. They make you return to them, to find what made you stop in that silence.... A sense of extreme loss pervades her writing, but it is counterbalanced with a lightness of touch, a fluidity and a simplicity that keeps you reading.' Tilly Nevin, The Oxford Culture Review [on The Print Museum]

Heidi Williamson on publishing her first collection

Heidi Williamson talks to Leila Telford at Writers' Centre Norwich.