AN INVERCLYDE poet says she's in ‘complete shock’ after her debut collection rocketed to the top of Amazon’s hot new releases and best-seller charts.

Dee Valletta of Inverkip only started writing poetry in May last year, but her work has proved popular.

She says lockdown has been the perfect opportunity to focus on bringing her poems together for publication in a collection called ‘Little Bits of Life Volume 1’.

Dee said: “It was a totally different outlook of expression that I hadn’t tried before.

"I play music so I thought I would try something different.

“I just slowly started building up a collection of poetry, and in January I decided I wanted to create a book.

“Lockdown was a chance to concentrate on that, I had a social life that was extinct at that point, so I had a lot of time.”

The wordsmith says she was looking to bring simplicity to what is often portrayed as a complicated and inaccessible discipline.

She said: “A lot of the poetry is written about observations that I see in everyday life where I live.

“It is really a book that people can dip in and out of when they want - I was looking to create a poem for every week of the year.

“I wanted to make it so that people could read it as they pleased, and so it was enjoyable and accessible."

The collection hit the number one spot on Amazon’s hot new releases chart for women’s poetry and also reached second place in the best sellers list for the same category.

Dee says she has been stunned by the success of her debut.

She said: “I have had a lot of positive responses with people saying they relate to the topics of the poems.

“I wanted to open poetry up to a wide audience and show it is something that can be enjoyed, it doesn’t have to be hard work.

“I wanted to show that it could be humorous, but also relatable to people at the same time.

“I never expected it to do so well so quickly."

Dee is now looking to develop her poetry by creating personalised pieces of work for family, friends and anyone else.

She said: “I have started taking commissions for personalised poetry if people have an event or want to give someone a gift which is a bit different."

The Inverkip resident is now looking ahead to her next release, with plenty of inspiration to draw upon from recent months.

She said: “I’m currently working on volume two, trying to create a new collection.

“There will definitely be a few lockdown references.

“I’m getting my inspiration from a lot of different places and hopefully people like it as much as the first one.”

*You can find Dee’s collection by searching ‘Little Bits of Life: Volume 1’ on Amazon.