The library will be closing at 1pm on Wednesday the 16th of September for an event. Dismiss

Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Burns Night
    • Scotland’s Makar
    • Podcasts
    • Best Scottish Poems
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • Nat 5 and Higher poems
    • Dyslexia-friendly lesson plans
    • Poems in Scots for schools
    • Rannan Chloinne / Children’s Verses
    • Nua-Nòs Gaelic Resources
    • Poems in English for schools
    • Scots poems for bairns
    • Posters
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Organising a cultural event at the SPL
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
  • Shop
    • SPL Shop
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Our projects
    • FAQs
    • Company papers
    • Jobs & Volunteering
    • Find us
    • Contact us
    • Making a complaint
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Poets
  • >
  • Vicki Feaver
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Vicki Feaver

b.1943

Vicki Feaver looking into the lense. She has short white hair and glasses.
POEMS LISTEN BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vicki Feaver is a poet who has lived in Scotland since 2000 when she moved to Dunsyre, South Lanarkshire. She previously taught creative writing at the University of Chichester where she is an Emeritus Professor.

She has received many awards and prizes for her poetry; Her poem ‘Judith’ won the 1993 Forward Prize for the Best Single Poem. The Handless Maiden (Cape, 1994)  won a Heineman Prize, a Cholmondely Award and was also shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. The Book of Blood (Cape, 2006) was shortlisted for the Costa and Forward prizes. Her most recent collection I Want! I Want! (Cape, 2019) was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize. She is a recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship, and an Arts Council Award.

Feaver has racked up the air miles travelling to America, Australia, India, Italy, France and Iraqi Kurdistan, to read her poetry. She was one of three poets invited to write on the themes of older age by the Baring Foundation, and her poems on the subject can be found in the resulting anthology, Second Wind (Saltire Society, 2015).

Recently, she has written poems on the effects of living with the onset of Parkinson’s.
– “Apart from my family, poetry is the most important thing in my life”, she tells us.

Read more

Read the poems

  • The Queen’s Jubilee Year
  • Ode to Parkinson’s
  • The Turquoise Slipper
  • The Surgeon’s Widow
  • Bats
  • Judith
  • The Handless Maiden
  • Ironing
  • Slow Reader
  • The Blue Wave
  • The Mower
  • The Witches
  • Sloes
  • Glow-worm

Listen

Selected Bibliography

Monograph (Pamela Robertson-Pearce, 1978)
Close Relatives (Secker, 1981)
Clean Sheets (Cathcart Press, 1986)
Modern Poets Vol 2 (2nd Series), with Carol Ann Duffy and Eavan Boland (Penguin , 1991)
Crab Apple Jelly (Somers Press, 1992)
The Handless Maiden (Cape, 1994)
Girl in Red and Other Poems (Scottish Book Trust, 2003)
The Book of Blood (Cape, 2006)
Second Wind, with Douglas Dunn and Diana Hendry (Saltire Society, 2015).
I Want! I Want! (Cape, 2019)

From the Library Catalogue

Publications about Vicki Feaver
Publications by Vicki Feaver

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy (UK)
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2026.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library
Manage Consent

To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.

We use privacy-focused tracking technologies to help us understand and improve the experience of our visitors. We track activity, not users, but you can still object to this tracking via our cookie policy.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
  • Manage options
  • Manage services
  • Manage {vendor_count} vendors
  • Read more about these purposes
View preferences
  • {title}
  • {title}
  • {title}