Ilse Pedler

Ilse Pedler is a poet and veterinary surgeon. She lives and works in The Lake District trying to juggle writing with the unpredictability of sick animals. She has also been a Morris dancer for over 30 years and no longer tries to hide it.

She has had poems published previously in many magazines including, Stand, Magma, Poetry News, and several anthologies. She was shortlisted in The Rialto Nature Poetry competition in 2014 and 2015 and in the Bridport prize 2016 and commended in the Hippocrates 2017. She is the winner of the 2015 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition. Her pamphlet, The Dogs That Chase Bicycle Wheels was published by Seren in March 2016. She was long listed in the National Poetry Competition in 2018. She lives and works as a Veterinary Surgeon in Grange over Sands near Kendal. Her first collection, Auscultation, was published by Seren in 2021

“I bring my experience as a practising veterinary surgeon to my poetry, writing about our relationships with animals and how they impact on our lives. In my poems I let you into the secrets of the consulting room, operating theatre and farm; the equipment, the techniques and the rituals and hierarchy. You are permitted access to the functioning of bodies and their failings and invited to wonder at insides laid bare during surgical procedures. 

In Auscultation, I also explore the idea of listening and being listened to through poems about motherhood and my experience of being a step mother. The fairy tales of my childhood found their way into some of these poems; queens, castles and three wishes interweaving with the contemporary challenges of step parenting and blended families. In these poems I interrogate the importance of the types of care we give and receive.”