Published Anthologies
Compiler/Editor:
100 Poems to Help you Heal (Batsford, 2025) and two forthcoming titles in the same series 100 Poems to Help you Relax (Batsford, October 2025) and 100 Poems to Grow your Confidence (Batsford, January 2026)
Poems for Tortured Souls (UK Hachette Children’s Group, 2024; UK paperback edition July 2025; U.S. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; translated into Spanish as Poemas Para Almas Torturadas by Vanesa Fusco), a Taylor-Swift inspired collection. ‘Inspired by today’s greatest lyricist, Taylor Swift, this collection overflows with folklore, love, heartache, revenge and peace – the perfect balm for any tortured soul. Featuring poems by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and many more, this moody and melancholy anthology celebrates the most famous – and tortured – poets.’
”chosen for their clarity, their emotional directness, and their potential appeal to the young, with a welcome eye to the authors’ demographics.” Stephanie Burt in slate.com, Professor of English at Harvard University
”A wonderful Swift-inspired introduction to classic poetry. I came for the Taylor Swift references (and this is a beautiful book!) but I stayed for the poetry. A really thoughtful, emotional collection and combination of poems that honours the romantic poets (mentioned by Swift), but mostly the poems by brilliant women such as Emily Dickinson, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Christina Rossetti and Edna St. Vincent Millay to name a few.” LJ Ireton, poet and author of Interlude, Haywood Books
A Poem to Read Aloud Every Day of the Year (Batsford, 2023) that encourages a daily reading habit and the power of reading aloud, reading together. In its fourth print run.
”A delightful and beautiful poetry anthology offering wisdom, laughs, solace, inspiration, and everything in between, for every day of the year.” Love Reading
”Liz, I have been so enjoying faithfully practicing reading aloud from your book. I visit an elderly friend most days and together we enjoy the rich variety of each poem of the day.”
”Such a lovely thoughtful and varied compilation of poems. And the added element of being encouraged to read them aloud makes this book really special. I have bought several as gifts and everyone is delighted!” Amazon review
A Literary Letter for Every Day of the Year (forthcoming September 2025)
This anthology is a look into the personal lives of some of the world’s most beloved poets, novelists, and playwrights. The letters contain wisdom and life lessons from the likes of John Keats and Oscar Wilde, as well as shared feelings of loneliness from Charlotte Brontë, loss from Ovid, and love from George Eliot. A collection with emotional, historical and literary significance, helping us to understand some of our favourites even further. This anthology spans the centuries from the classic to the contemporary, and includes Ignatius Sancho, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, the Brontës, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Maya Angelou, and many more.
Literary Walks, Talks and Workshops
Liz leads poetry and shared reading groups, poetry walks (in conjunction with The Poetry Pharmacy and Night Bird Press and Prof Tara Stubbs in Oxford, British Academy grant): In Search of London’s Tortured Poets (a walk around Marylebone and Soho) and a Virginia Woolf themed walk: Virginia Woolf Walk: ‘Walking the ‘Oxford Street Tide’ — from Bloomsbury to Oxford Street.
Liz runs workshops with libraries and other organisations on the ‘transformative power of poetry’.
Delivered talk on the correspondence of Charles Dickens and Eliza Davis in relation to Oliver Twist and Our Mutual Friend at the Charles Dickens Museum (2025).
Other publications and articles
Walking with Dickens: Night fancies, corpse candles and a houseless shadow Essay in Louisa Albani’s/Night Bird Press’ The Night Walker: Charles Dickens’s Nocturnal City (September 2025)
“What a wonderful pamphlet this is! Louisa Albani’s hauntingly beautiful illustrations, and the highly atmospheric contributions by Sally Bayley and Liz Ison, combine with extracts from what might just be Dickens’s finest piece of non-fictional prose, ‘Night Walks’, to conjure up the nocturnal city in all its spectral strangeness” Matthew Beaumont, author of Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London
Article in The Dickensian (Spring 2025, No. 525): ‘All looks were fixed upon one man’
Article on welldoing.org ‘Come to the Peaceful Woods: Poetry as a Transformative Tool for Healing’
Podcasts
Demystifying Poetry Podcast with Prof Tara Stubbs
In Episode 6 Poetry Professor Tara Stubbs of Oxford University talks to Liz about her approach to designing poetry walks and what happened when Liz read Shelley’s Ozymandias with a group in a pub on a Saturday afternoon after a literary walk of Oxford.
The Reader Podcast with Katie Clark
In Episode 15, The Reader’s Director of Literature, Katie Clark, spoke to Liz about her reading life, how that’s been influenced by Shared Reading, and the genesis of anthology A Poem to Read Aloud Every Day of the Year. During their chat they read aloud from the collection and delve into the mysteries and magic of reading aloud.
Jobs, roles and volunteering
Freelance museum and gallery educator at the Charles Dickens Museum (Key Stages 2-5); editorial assistant for the Oral History Journal; visitor assistant at Sir John Soane’s Museum.
Liz is a long time volunteer with The Reader, running many shared reading groups, currently a zoom shared reading group and an intergenerational shared poetry reading group spanning 3-100+ in a care home. She is also a volunteer front of house at Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Square.
Group testimonials
”In the past, when someone asked whether I enjoyed poetry I would answer a resounding “no”. That is, until we started reading poems aloud together, repeating lines and sharing our thoughts. A light is switched on. The music of the words married with insight. A new era of appreciation dawns.” Group member
”Being encouraged to read poetry aloud has been very therapeutic. Apart from understanding the meaning of the poem, the rhythm of the words seem to transfer you to another level of consciousness. A joyful experience!” Group member