ELEANOR REES

Eleanor has written her first song lyric, ‘High Tide’,  for the award-winning folk singer, Emily Portman. Emily and Eleanor share a fascination with metamorphosis and shape-shifting, a theme which Emily has eerily captured in her ghostly and tidal melody.

‘High Tide’ will be played for the first time at the Irish Sea Sessions, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, 18th October 2013, part of Liverpool Irish Festival, 2013.

For more on Emily Portman

This from the Philharmonic on the Irish Sea Sessions:

The groundbreaking, part super-group part sessions project returns with a radically new and exciting line up of the most talented musicians in their field. Now in its fourth year, 13 hand-picked multi-instrumentalists and singers from traditional and contemporary music backgrounds, and from both sides of the Irish Sea, come together with the audience for another night of impassioned exposition of the shared music and the special bond between Liverpool and Ireland.

The line-up changes each year. This year, singers Declan O’Rourke (Galileo, Sarah), Emily Portman (BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Winner 2013 Best Contemporary Song ‘The Hatchling’), Robert Vincent (Life In Easy Steps), Pauline Scanlon (one half of the duo Lumiere) and Alan Burke (Rambling Boys of Pleasure, Afterhours, Tulsk) provide most of the songs.

They are backed by an ensemble of hand-picked instrumentalists: the Coyne Brothers – Mick on uillean pipes, Eamon on fiddle, and Terry Clarke-Coyne on flutes and whistles – are joined by Sean Regan on fiddle, Gino Lupari (of Four Men and a Dog) on percussion, David Munnelly on button accordion and piano, and Neil Campbell on guitars, all led by musical director Bernard O’Neill on double bass and piano. They are equally at home leading rollicking sets of reels or delicate airs. The musicians meet together for the first time just three days in advance, and put together a two-hour show that has all the atmosphere of the finest pub session, with all the quality of a major concert hall setting.

‘One of the highlights of the Liverpool musical year…people will boast for years to come – I was there’
Liverpool Echo

 

Edge Hill’s Creative Writing Department present Sculpted in the Rose Theatre

Tickets £4.50 all

Eleanor will read her poem ‘Salt Water’ and others as well as participating in discussion around Poetry in the North West.

How is a region created and defined? How does it shape us and how do we, in turn, shape a region? Sculpted is a definitive, ground-breaking anthology of poems by 62 of the North West’s best contemporary poets. As diverse as the area that inspired them, the poems dig beneath the skin of the region: its towns and cities, countryside, industries, history, geology, and above all, its people.

‘The poems are gritty, witty, wise, anarchic and tender when needed’. Mike Harding

The evening is hosted by the Creative Writing programme at Edge Hill. If you would like to know more about our courses, please contact the Course Information, Advice and Guidance Team on 01695 657000 or by email study@edgehill.ac.uk

 

In August Eleanor ran writing activities with children in the museum to gather content for a poem she subsequently wrote and presented in the story-tent over the course of an afternoon!  She read the poem one-on-one and to groups of visiting children (and adults!)  For a blog about the work

http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/2013/08/remaking-the-world-writing-a-new-poem-for-telling-tales/

Here’s the full poem:

 

 

 

Night Tales

This poem was written with ideas and images created by young people visiting the ‘Telling Tales: The Art of Indian Storytelling’ exhibition, World Museum Liverpool, Aug 2013.  Children were asked to invent new creatures, half animal and half human, to describe where they lived, what they liked doing also to tell us something important! The poem below includes a range of the responses from the young people and was presented in the gallery, in a story-tent, to visitors 1^st Sept 2013.

 

Liverpool is buzzing with tales come alive,

hanging out in St John’s Gardens on a midsummer’s night.

 

The children had been dreaming strong and bold.

The tales sit on the steps at the front of the museum,

 

head in hands, uncertain where to go, –

all of the tales half animal, half human.

 

They flick long woolly tails, flutter wings

and run like children do all along the walls.

 

Tall tales rest on the bottom of the steps

stretching their long limbs against the cold stone.

 

The moon is full, and the night is warm.

“I came from the ocean,” says one woman.

 

Her silver dress glints, gold hair sparks, brown eyes blink.

“I was under the sea playing with fish bones.”

 

She shakes a shook of sea-weedy hair,

surprised to be enjoying the unsalted air.

 

“I came from New Brighton Beach,” says another –

her mermaid’s tail splashing on the sandstone.

 

“I came from Delemere, from the green of the woods,”

says a lion. ‘I came alone, teleported from my shady home.”

 

He roars and shakes his mane. A zebra with wings

and a girl’s legs giggles, flaps and flies a lap around the gables.

 

A butterfly with a boy’s head joins her in a dance

as out from the shadowy side streets sleeping children appear,

 

walking slowly from the tunnel mouth, out from the station,

out from the routes in from their cosy homes.

 

A bus without a driver stops in an empty layby.

Children parachute down from apartment blocks,

 

all gathering on William Brown Street outside the library.

A boy, about ten, in purple PJs is pushed forward by his friends.

 

He stands on the wall to address the crowd of Tales and children.

“Be quiet,” he shouts, and silence falls.

 

The moon coughs once. The stars sit on their hands.

 

All faces turn to him. “I need to tell you something,”

he says clear and loud. “Important things, now listen.”

 

The children behind him whisper and jostle.

“Go on, tell them,” breathes a girl.

 

“I have my heart in my head. I can feel all your thoughts.”

“Tell them about dancing, of course and reading, that’s important

 

and tender loving care and not biting,”

looking straight at the lion.

 

“Being with our families, helping others.

Tales are you listening?” The creatures nod slow and thoughtful.

 

A monkey scribbles words into a notebook.

The unicorn scratches ideas into the sand with his horn.

 

“You must do what good tales do!”

 

“Make roses,” shouts a boy from the crowd.

“Turn invisible,” says another.

 

“Save people,” declares a girl.

“Turn everything to chocolate, learn to fly.”

 

Until everyone is talking at once –

a cacophony of voices imagining the world.

 

A horse with a lion’s legs flies over the car park.

An octopus in a soap bubble rolls laughing down the street.

“When I was at sea I saw cities float on tides,” sings a merman.

“When I was in a zoo,” cries a zebra, “my cage flew away like a bird.”

 

A tried pony shakes his head, writes ‘To do’

on the top of his jotter. ‘Imagine more,’ he underlines

 

as all the children cry –

“Go out into the daylight Tales and do your work!”

 

With this the rain stutters and the sky shakes hard.

Everyone runs back into the shadows for shelter

 

and a dozy pigeon on the library roof

nods his head, ruffles his feathers

 

and shuts his eyes to dream till dawn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleanor Rees, Aug 2013

photo by Graham Lester George

 

This new poem ‘Queen Fisher’ appears in the Derry-based contemporary art and poetry magazine ‘Abridged’ alongside ‘Tooth and Jaw’ by Gail Mahon, a striking image of what could be an animal’s skull. Here’s the online version of the magazine, though it looks wonderful in print.

://abridgedonline.com/wp-content/uploads/abridged_primal-71.pdf

”Tide’ , a poem about Liverpool and place has been published in the latest ‘Poetry Wales’ magazine. Winter 12-13 Vol. 48 No. 3

poetrywales.co.uk. This is also the poem which featured in the recent North West libraries postcard promotion ‘Time to Read’.

Eleanor is researching and writing a new poem for this event ‘Woven Words’ at Congleton Library, 29th November. Here she is on ‘The Cloud’ exploring the area.

Poet, Eleanor Rees and writer, Zoe Lambert, present a selection of readings from their widely published work exploring representations of place. Both Zoe and Eleanor write about places and locality. Eleanor’s poetry often explores the post-industrial landscapes of Merseyside, similarly, Zoe’s recent collection of short stories, The War Tour explores the landscapes and people of urban Manchester in connection to global localities and conflict. Zoe and Eleanor will discuss the questions that motivate their work and the challenges these themes present for a writer. Includes Q & A with the writers & book signings.

Walls Have Voices features new work from Blackpool creative writers inspired by Blackpool’s wonderful and unique built heritage. Beautifully illustrated by specially commissioned photographs by photographer, Yannick Dixon. Project mentors, writers Zoe Lambert and Elly Rees will introduce readings by the project writers.

Also Eleanor Rees & Zoe Lambert will lead writers workshops with Blackpool 6th Form students & Blackpool & the Fylde College Students.

7.30 pm, Blackpool Central Library http://blackpoolwordpool.wordpress.com/download-your-wordpool-2012-programme/

‘Saltwater’,  a short poetry/film by Glenn-Emlyn Richards has been selected for the Zebra Poetry Festival, Berlin 18-21st October. On 19th October the festival is hosting a ‘Long Reading Night’ where a selection of poets from across Europe will present their work and talk about collaborating with filmmakers. Eleanor will be reading a range of her poems, translated in German by Dr Torsten Caeners of University of Essen, as part of this event. http://www.zebra-award.org/

 

Here’s Eleanor at the Poet’s Long Reading Night, reading work  at midnight with the translation in the background.

Eleanor will present a newly comissioned poem on National Poetry Day, 4th October at Runcorn Library. The event is part of the north west region ‘Time to Read’  promotion. For more on the project http://haltonlibraries.blogspot.co.uk/

Two new poem from Eleanor,  ‘Crossing Over’ and ‘Mainline Rail’, have been published in stylish London magazine ‘The White Review’.

Arne’s Progress

Over the last sixth months Eleanor has been collaborating with illustrator, Desdemona McCannon, to create an illustrated newspaper of new poems, ‘Arne’s Progress’ which draws on the visual and literary history of broadside ballads. The poems dramatise a journey through the Liverpool of 2012 and its concurrent history by Arne, a  birdman, accompanied by dynamic, folk inspired illustration.  To buy a copy and for more info see here