ELEANOR REES

Eleanor read poems about rivers, the Mersey and all things watery following the fascinating talk The Cult of Water by David Bramwell at Gibberish Brewpub, Liverpool, 16th January.
Photo: Ali Harwood

Eleanor was pleased to read new poems about Bridie’s Well at St. Brides Church, Liverpool as part of a fundraising event to restore the church.  There was song, comedy, cake, soup, wine and a raffle. It as a very warm and welcoming evening on a rainy Liverpool night.

Eleanor is pleased to be giving a Guest Reading at the beautiful church, St Brides Liverpool, for Poetry by the Fireside, 26th Jan, 7.30 p.m. All proceeds go to St. Brides S.O.S. £7.00 (Waged £5.00 (Unwaged) All including soup. A warming wintery event.

Eleanor is contributing poetry and thoughts on watery life of the Mersey and Liverpool for this event on 17th Jan 2019. Gibberish Brewpub,  7.00 pm http://www.liverpoolartslab.com/wp/2018/12/13/david-bramwell-interview/

Eleanor will publish her fourth collection of poetry in June 2019. The Well at Winter Solstice is forthcoming from Salt publishing.

‘These are the voices of those who are silent: in the graveyards, holy wells, the river, the changing tides. A ghostly choir of lost children, hermits, lovers and rough sleepers, serving maids and sailor boys, saints and hermaphrodites resounding through the rhythms of the water. Places and objects communicate also: a chapel, oak tree, back-lane, woodland, riverside town; bones sing and a bell tolls. The poems speak with them and for them, channelling their messages, their visions and their warnings.’

For more details and to pre-order https://www.saltpublishing.com/collections/2019-new-titles/products/the-well-at-winter-solstice-9781784631840

Eleanor is pleased to publish a new poem ‘St. Seiriol’s Well’ in the winter issue of Poetry Wales.

Eleanor read a selection of new poems for the inaugural Mystery Literary Festival at Holy Trinity Church, Wavertree.  Eleanor read for forty minutes in the resonant atmosphere of the Georgian church.

‘Glorious poetry of time, ancient wells and winters ‘ Ronnie Hughes. Read a review over at PoetryPool

Photos: Ronnie Hughes

Eleanor has a new poem ‘Passage Grave’ in The Clearing Magazine accompanied by illustration by Desdemona McCannon. https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/poetry/new-poems-by-eleanor-rees-tim-creswell-and-ralph-pite/

Image by Desdemona McCannon http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/profile/dmccannon

Eleanor has two new poems, ‘In Midsummer’ and ‘The Lighthouse’, in Abridged 0-53 – Relapse. Read them here.http://abridgedonline.com/abridged-0-53-relapse/

Abridged is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Image by Tara Wray: http://www.tarawray.net/

Eleanor has been awarded a Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry 2018 for her work-in-progress ‘The Well at Winter Solstice’.

Eleanor received £1000 towards the completion of the work from the judge, poet Imtiaz Dharker, at the awards ceremony in Newcastle on 26th June, 2018.

Poets Helen Mort, Elizabeth Barrett, Lindsey Holland and Clare Shaw also received an award.

 http://northernwritersawards.com/

Pic: New Writing North

Eleanor has written a new poem for The Black Chair Eisteddfod Centenary Festival, Birkenhead Park 2017. She read her poem ‘Memorial’ as part of the Crowning ceremony, a children’s poetry competition held in Welsh and English and adjudicated by Professor Deryn Rees-Jones on 9th September at Wirral Hospital School.

In the Birkenhead Eisteddfod of 1917 Welsh language poet Hedd Wyn won the Eisteddfod Chair with his poem ‘The Hero’ but he had been killed in the Battle of Passchendaele.  On hearing of his death the chair was covered with a black shroud and returned to his birthplace in Snowdonia.

The centenary was marked by the restoration of the memorial stone and a public ceremony in Birkenhead Park led by Huw Edwards and attended by many dignitaries.

Also for this project, during the summer of 2017 Eleanor and artist Sian Bailey led poetry and illustration workshops with primary school children in Birkenhead on the theme of War and Peace.

The children’s poems will be published in an anthology which will include the full text of Eleanor’s poem.

Eleanor read her newly commissioned poem  ‘St James’s at 3 am’ and other new poems at ‘Tonight at Noon’: a celebration of fifty years of The Mersey Sound at the Bluecoat Arts Centre in June. The reading also included poets Andrew McMillan, Lizzie Nunnery, Deryn Rees-Jones, Paul Farley and Brian Patten. 

Photo left to right: Eleanor Rees, Brian Patten, Lizzie Nunnery, Andrew McMillan.

Eleanor was also invited to read her poem ‘Bridie’s Tomb’ at the launch of the ‘Women on Brexit’ Special Issue of Poem Magazine. The launch was held in the House of Commons. Eleanor’s poem brings the voices of the female ghosts of St James’s Cemetery, Liverpool into the Brexit debate.  http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpom20/current

Eleanor collaborated with improvised voice artist, Steve Boyland for a performance at the Everyman Theatre 11th Feb, 2017.  This was part of The Enemies Project, North by North West Poetry Tour curated by Steven Fowler and Tom Jenks.

The performance sets a section from a new poem by Eleanor within an improvised soundscape.

View the full piece here

‘Rees has an outstanding ability to act as a conduit between past and present. It is as though she has tapped into an ancient reservoir ‘remarkable and unsung’, and stepped aside in order for the reader to experience the torrent of its mysterious element uninterrupted by poetic  ego or personal agenda. She slips like silt between and into different forms: seagull, mineral, light. A diver into – and retriever of –  other realms and substances, she is made of mud ‘ so otherly, otherly’.

Nicky Arscott, Poetry Wales Summer 2016

‘Rees’ poems are difficult to transcribe prosaically, moving as they do in a densely fairy-tale or dream-logical atmosphere. This aspect of her work in Blood Child and Riverine is hugely effective, creating a lush dreamscape full of mud, sludge, mulch and other fecundities, populated by eerie running children, unreliable parents, poet-birds and their panoramic perspectives’

Dave Coates, York Literary Review

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