ELEANOR REES
Poet
Poetry Publications
Andraste’s Hair
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE FELIX DENNIS BEST FIRST COLLECTION PRIZE (FORWARD PRIZES FOR POETRY 2007 AND THE GLEN DIMPLEX NEW WRITERS AWARDS 2008) Bridging the divide between experimental, performance and traditional poetries the poems in Andraste’s Hair draw on myth, memory, folksong and murder ballad. Often set in a mythical Liverpool, a city of metamorphosis and magic, grotesque and beautiful, its buildings are a backdrop for visions and apprehensions of the past. Liverpool at night is a place where boundaries are crossed in search of knowledge, sexual, historical, and emotional – between life and death. Natural and urban landscapes – woodland, city park, dock, terraced street, the river, provide settings for an exploration of the conflict between instinctive and cultured knowledge, between abstract thought and felt experience. The poems are active and forceful – looking for answers they never find. Realities are established and than subverted. Women become trees, cities become men, roads become rivers, night becomes dawn, and the world is constantly transformed, constantly in flux. Collaborative processes inform the structure of many poems; fusion and the loss of self are preoccupying themes. The poetic voice is remade to articulate what has been discovered in the act of writing. Sometimes…
Eliza and the Bear
Eleanor Rees’s first collection, Andraste’s Hair was shortlisted for Best First Collection in the 2007 Forward Prizes and for the 2008 Glen Dimplex Poetry Award. In her second full-length collection she continues to play the role of mythologiser and tale teller, moving away from her previous subject, the imagined city, into the magical psyches of changeling creatures. In powerful nocturnal encounters silent visitors travel from the dark world, take on elemental form and embrace Rees’s narrators with sensual and erotic urgency. Laced with tales of physical transformations, Rees’s use of fairy stories and night visions radically reimagines the female experience through the psychic collisions of the body and our desires. Eliza and the Bear offers a man who gives birth, trees that sing, a dissolving house, a woman trapped in walls, a peasant farmer in his barren fields, the wife of a Victorian botanist who longs for a child while her husband ‘discovers’ the new world, winter songs and red hot hearths: mysterious forces which have their home within us all. Reviews Eliza and the Bear by Eleanor Rees Salt Publishing, 2009 ‘Rewilding’ is a vogue idea in conservation biology. Even while the twentieth century has seen the development of…
A Burial of Sight
Arne’s Progress
Blood Child
Tam Lin of the Winter Park
Portents and Portals: New and Selected Poems
Riverine
Solo Readings
Eleanor is an experienced and powerful reader of her own work. Her poetry is written to be heard; the dense sound patterns and textures of her poetry fully coming to life when spoken aloud. Eleanor creates a poetic experience rich with image and an immersive atmosphere, soft and sensual. Commissioned poems have appeared on Radio 3, The Verb as part of the Free Thinking Festival, Liverpool 2007 — a live broadcast in front of a studio audience, BBC Radio 3 Breakfast Programme, BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio 4. A selection of recordings of solo readings: Eleanor reads ‘Night River’ as part of the Write On Liverpool, photography exhibition by Leila Romaya and Paul McCann, 2008. The recording was made at Otterspool prom on the Mersey river early one spring morning. Night River at Otterspool Prom, 2008 Eleanor reading ‘Changeling’ at the London Launch of Eliza and the Bear 2009 Eleanor Rees reads Changeling video A selection of solo public readings 1999-2011 Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool 4th December 2010; Poetry Café, Poetry Society, Covent Garden, London18th Sept, 2010;Poetry at the GRV Reading, Edinburgh, 12th Sept, 2010;Hidden Door’ Festival, Aug, 2010;Edinburgh Festival Fringe Salt Poets Reading, Edinburgh 23rd Aug, 2010;Twilight at the Bandstand, Sefton…
Biography
Eleanor Rees was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in 1978. Her pamphlet collection Feeding Fire received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and her first full length collection Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards. Rees works in the community as a poet, running writing workshops for The Windows Project and is also a part-time Lecturer in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She often collaborates with other writers, musicians and artists and works to commission. She lives in Liverpool.
Contact
For all publishing enquiries Salt Publishing Limited 14a High Street, Fulbourn, CAMBRIDGE, CB21 5DH Phone: +44 (0)1223 882220 Fax: +44 (0)1223 882260 For all workshops and schools bookings The Windows Project First Floor, Liver house, Bold Street, Liverpool. L1 4HY phone: 0151 7093688 www.windowsproject.co.uk For collaborations/commissions/ readings reeseleanor@hotmail.com
Diary 2025
Review Quotes
Translated Works
Research and Essays
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