A day of Geopoetry took place as part of the Canterbury Festival Umbrella.
For a reading list in poetry therapy and related subjects click here
Imaginary Gardens and Real Toads – online event for the Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred.
This took place on Tuesday 2nd November 2021 – video recording available via the link
In this interactive talk, Victoria Field will explore some of the ways in which the poetic can enhance our lives and expand our sense of connection with ourselves, the world and the transcendent. Mindful reading of poems and writing in response can offer solace, pleasure, new insights and even awakening experiences. We will look specifically at how metaphor, form and rich ambiguity work in poems. No previous experience or knowledge is required. Please bring a notebook and something to write with. Booking here.
Media Coverage
A commissioning editor from the Hearst group contacted me in autumn 2020. Features on the power of poetry for health and wellbeing have since appeared in Red magazine, Good Housekeeping and Prima. Links to the features are below.
FEATURES Power of Poetry (PDF Spread) 
SELF Psychology of relaxation (PDF Spread)
publications by Victoria Field
Books
My latest poetry collection, A Speech of Birds came out in 2020.
Memoir
Baggage – A Book of Leavings Francis Boutle 2016
Non-fiction
Writing Routes – A Resource Handbook of Therapeutic Writing edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field, Kate Thompson. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, November 2010
Prompted to Write – 2nd edition – fal, July 2010, edited by Zeeba Ansari and Victoria Field
Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field, Kate Thompson.
Jessica Kingsley Publishers August 2006
Poetry
The Lost Boys Waterloo Press, 2013
October Guests – with Caroline Carver, Penelope Shuttle fal 2009
Many Waters – Poems from Ten Months at Truro Cathedral fal, November 2006
Olga’s Dreams, fal, 2004
Book Translations
The Dictatorship of Poetry Zurab Rtveliashvili trans Natalia Bukia Peters & Victoria Field, Francis Boutle, 2018
House with no Doors – Ten Georgian Women Poets, trans Natalia Bukia Peters & Victoria Field, Francis Boutle, 2016
Footprints on Water Dato Magradze, trans Natalia Bukia Peters & Victoria Field, fal, 2015
Me Margarita, Ana Kordzaia-Samadashvili, trans Natalia Bukia Peters & Victoria Field, Dalkey Archive, 2014
Giacomo Ponti Dato Magradze, trans Natalia Bukia Peters & Victoria Field, fal, 2012
Children’s
The Gift – fal in association with Truro Cathedral, December 2007
Short Story Translations
It’s Me! by Ekaterina Togonidze, from the Georgian with Natalia Bukia Peters in Best European Fiction 2015, Dalkey Archive Press, 2014
Sex for Fridge by Zurab Lezhava, from the Georgian with Natalia Bukia Peters in Best European Fiction 2011, Dalkey Archive Press, 2010
Book chapters
‘In this together’ by Victoria Field and Graham Hartill in Expressive Writing in Counseling and Healthcare eds Kate Thompson and Kathleen Adams Trowman and Littlefield 2015
Contributed poems to Learning with the Labyrinth Palgrave Macmillan (2016)
Broadcasts
BBC Radio Four Swimming Lesson – short story – June 2014
BBC Radio Four Something Understood – poem – January 2009
BBC Radio Cornwall Reflections 6 daily meditations, February 2007
BBC Radio Four, Sunday Worship Commissioned poem The Things They Said January 2007
BBC Radio Cornwall Reflections 6 daily meditations, December 2006
BBC Radio Three, The Verb Commissioned poem, Register of Arrivals and Sailings No 22, April 2003
Drama
Benson – full length play – script-in-hand performance in association with Marlowe Theatre Canterbury – May 2014, in association with cube theatre and Truro Cathedral, rehearsed reading 2nd, 3rd February 2013, Burrell Theatre, Truro Cathedral Chapter House
Glass Heart produced by Hall for Cornwall – tour to Penzance, Tregony, Truro, Mullion, Falmouth, Camborne, St Austell, Constantine February 2006
Blood performed at Hall for Cornwall, July 2005
Editorial
Member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Poetry Therapy
Previously member of the Advisory Board for Poetry London Magazine
Essays, articles and reviews
Redgrove Remembered New Walk 4, Spring /Summer 2012, p22-25
Sometimes Green Spirit: the journal Volume 12:3 / Winter 2010
What Lies Beneath Green Spirit: the journal Volume 11.3 / Winter 2009
Poetry as Therapy Poetry on the Lake Journal Journal 2, Autumn 2009
What does a poetry therapist do? Inside Out magazine, Issue One, Autumn 2008
Wild Thing – Animal Poetry Green Spirit: The Journal Volume 10.1 / Spring 2008
Getting Stuck In – The Reader – 2007
regular book reviews for Writing in Education and Lapidus magazines
Poetry anthologies
Diamond Cutters – 2016
Boat, Choice, Pilgrim 2016 Labyrinth book
Cornish Blessings Booklet
Mrs Bagnall Explains Magnesium in Best British Poetry 2015 Salt
The Ruined Nunnery in Hildegard Visions and Inspirations, ed Gabriel Griffin, Wyvern Works, 2014
Forget-me-nots The Book of Love and Loss ed June Hall and RV Bailey, Belgrave Press 2014
October, Poetry General The Quadrant Book of Poetry ed Les Murray, Quadrant Books 2012
Full Moon at Little White Alice in Stone Poetry on the Lake, Wyvern Works, 2011
Lake Orta, Ten Years On in Reflections on Lake Orta, edited by Gabriel Griffin. Wyvern Works, 2010.
The Wind Man in Poetry Trend ed Aprilia Zank, Lit Verlag Berlin 2010
Service in Emergency Verse ed Alan Morrison, The Recusant, 2010
Tree of Doors in Great Trees of Cornwall, Palores, 2009
My Affair with the Bat in On a Bats Wing, Five Leaves Press 2007
St Davids in Wild, edited by Gabriel Griffin. Wyvern Works, 2007
Aestival Trance St Agnes Poets for a Cornish Assembly, Boho Press, 2006
Dark Angel and Chough in (new ed) Chatter of Choughs, Hypatia, 2005
Some Breasts of Europe in The Uplifting Book of Breasts, 2005
Afghan Market, Peshawar in Contraflower eds Sarah Annetts & Peter Johnson, Scriberzone, 2005
Tides published in Freedom Rules ed David Hart, Flarestack Publishing 2004
Temenos published in Hortus Conclusus Wyvern Works, Italy, 2003
Chough published in Chatter of Choughs, Signal Books, 2001
Dark Angel published in Spirit of a King Palores Press, 2001
Purdah published in Twenty Years of Twentieth Century Poetry , Staple, April 2001
Greek Salad in Northern Latitudes published in the Ways With Words Festival Anthology 1998
Books
Francis Boutle, 2016
A memoir of pilgrimage and marriage.
Praise for Baggage
When she is walking the pilgrimage route of The Camino Victoria Field meets the figure of Mercury (the messenger); there is nothing fanciful about the encounter. It has an authentic and down-to-earth magic to it, which exemplifies the nature of her book. She meets many other pilgrims along the way, and brings them all vividly into our view. As she recounts her journey, she also tells the story of her marriage and divorce.
She weaves these two accounts into a living tapestry of her life: here is the numinous, the sexual, the spiritual, the poetic, the humorous, the sorrowful. Her writing possesses those qualities drawn from the four functions of human experience, working in harmony, which Jung distinguishes as needful for wholeness – feeling, intellect, intuition, sensation.
Penelope Shuttle
In our secular times, the ancient Camino – or pilgrims’ way – across northern Spain has become increasingly popular. That fact alone reveals that something else is going on in what is supposedly a secular age. But the genius of Victoria Field’s engaging, intimate, painfully honest and often moving account of her own ‘mid-life muddle’ of a pilgrimage rests in how in Baggage, past, present and future combine spiritually and creatively.
Peter Stanford
How does anyone survive the ending of a marriage? In Baggage, both Victoria Field’s sense of wonder and awareness of loss continually fascinate. She packs her bag and joins hundreds of other pilgrims, but only a poet could depict so acutely how a marriage fails. Tough, lyrical, devastating, Baggage is a courageous achievement.
Robert Minhinnick
I am delighted to have a poem in this new anthology:
And to have contributed a chapter co-written with long-standing friend and colleague Graham Hartill in this fascinating new book:
Waterloo Press, Hove, 2013
Poetry
Winner of the Holyer an Gof Award for Poetry & Drama 2014
Poems
Book contributions
I have contributed some poems to this thought-provoking book on using labyrinths in universities. Book will be available mid-May 2016
Research
I was privileged to be part of the Barts QMU Stylus Research Project. Their full report is now available from the National Institute for Health Research – April 2016
