ELEANOR REES

A selection of Eleanor’s poems are translated into German as part of the EU funded Versopolis programme.

Eleanor travelled to Austria in April, 2019  to read at the International Literary Festival Literatur and Wein alongside Marija Andrijaseevic (Croatia), Jacobe Mansztajn (Poland) and Vladimir Durisic (Macedonia).

Photo Copyright: S. Waldecker/Literaturhaus NÖ.

A new review of Blood Child and Riverine has appeared in international literary journal, Tears in the Fence 169.  Written by poet and academic Sean Street, the review engages with Eleanor’s poetics and her poetic project as a whole. Here are two quotes taken from a longer review.

“Yet it seems likely that only a place with the character of Liverpool, and its history of arrivals, leavings, history and cultural diversity could breed such richly imaginative, allusive and unique poetry as this. The trains come and go at the bottom of the garden, everything seems normal, current, scheduled, but in the park, behind manicured flowerbeds, standing stones older than the pyramids brood, and always, always there is the Mersey, wide, tidal and haunted by invisible lost ships; nowhere can be fixed and static when water flows through it. Thus while the city of which she writes is real, solid, material, it is also fluid, flexing and indeterminate, dreamlike as it filters through her consciousness and into the poems. Rees’s best work is hallucinogenic; like Powys, the ‘localness’ in her writing is overlaid with more than ‘universal’ connections, and it melts place and universe together in a way that disconcerts the reader”

and from later in the review,

 ‘Together, Blood Child and Riverine convey seductively cross-fading time-scapes; it is in the end this quality that makes these remarkable poems linger in the memory, unsettling and disquieting, redefining so-called realities. Dark, visceral, her use of language and image is controlled and concentrated, and through it the message is one of connection. World and human personality are intimately woven together; we are not observers of the game but part of it, belonging to the continuum. It comes down to time, the context through which we move; past and present occupy the same space within Rees’s theory of relativity, and chronology for her is measured both in every day and cosmic terms, just as local and universal, yesterday, today and tomorrow brush against one another, with us –rushing but static– in their midst.’

– Sean Street, Tears in the Fence

Eleanor will be reading as part of an evening of music, spoken word and poetry at Naked Lunch Café at about 9 pm.

The event is part of the Presence Art Exhibition organised by Not Just Collective, Liverpool.

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