After school, she joined the civil service, and as a young woman, wrote some poetry and fiction.
During the Second World War, she was a meteorologist with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force for RAF Bomber Command in Yorkshire.
[1] Having written nothing for twenty-five years, Pamela Gillilan now returned to writing poetry.
[2] In 1979, her poem "Come Away", an elegy on the death of her husband, won the Cheltenham Festival poetry competition.
That Winter (1986), collecting elegies to her husband,[3] was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.