Sam Steele

I’m Sam Steele — a poet, children’s author and sometimes-reluctant performer who lives and works from a small B&B in Inverness. I was born in Canada, grew up between England and Canada, and somehow ended up feeling most myself under a Highland sky. I say I’m mid-Atlantic in accent, but my poems are unabashedly Scottish: the landscape, the food (yes, there’s a poem about haggis), the people, the small day-to-day things that add up to a life worth noticing.

I write for children and adults. My children’s picture books grew out of a love for story and a habit of noticing: Santa’s Adventure at Loch Ness, Rupert the Red Squirrel, and most recently Luno the Loch Ness Alpaca. My adult collections — My Toolbox Doesn’t Like Me and Measured Approach — sit beside odd little poems and performance pieces. I enjoy the contrast. Sometimes I write playful nonsense; sometimes I write poems that come from lived experience.