Andraste's Hair
Eleanor Rees(Author)
Salt Publishing
Published on 15. November 2007
Book
Hardback
80 pages
978-1-84471-304-2 (ISBN)
Description
Short-Listed For The Felix Dennis Best First Collection Prize (Forward Prizes For Poetry 2007) 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 erotic, sometimes fierce, sometimes vulnerable the poems fuse a musical sense of language with a grounded vision of the world.
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 erotic, sometimes fierce, sometimes vulnerable the poems fuse a musical sense of language with a grounded vision of the world.
Reviews / Votes
Rees's work is completely deserving of its shortlist position, even more so for a voice outside the mainstream. That can only be good news for small presses, literary awards and non-dead poets everywhere. -- Ross Sutherland * Liverpool Metro * Eleanor Rees's debut collection offers up a heartfelt hymn to her native Liverpool. Her dense, textured renderings of its landscapes are eloquent, but it is her importunate, ambiguous relationship with the city that provides these poems with their drive. -- Sarah Crown * The Guardian * Rees's work is completely deserving of its shortlist position, even more so for a voice outside the mainstream. That can only be good news for small presses, literary awards and non-dead poets everywhere. -- Ross Sutherland * Liverpool Metro * Eleanor Rees's debut collection offers up a heartfelt hymn to her native Liverpool. Her dense, textured renderings of its landscapes are eloquent, but it is her importunate, ambiguous relationship with the city that provides these poems with their drive. -- Sarah Crown * The Guardian *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-84471-304-2 (9781844713042)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
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. Eleanor 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. Eleanor often collaborates with other writers, musicians and artists and works to commission. She lives in Liverpool. www.eleanorrees.com
Content
Night Vision
Roadworks
A Red Moon
Night River
Seams of Dust
The Clock Tower
Headlights
Parkland
Andraste's Hair
The Fair
Or snow
Mermaid
Working the Land
Olwyn's Valley
July
Body
Castle Hill
Tell me something of this
Wolf
Sky God Thunder
August
Flood
Winter Dawn
Rain-naked
Circle
On shore
A Nocturnal Opera
Roadworks
A Red Moon
Night River
Seams of Dust
The Clock Tower
Headlights
Parkland
Andraste's Hair
The Fair
Or snow
Mermaid
Working the Land
Olwyn's Valley
July
Body
Castle Hill
Tell me something of this
Wolf
Sky God Thunder
August
Flood
Winter Dawn
Rain-naked
Circle
On shore
A Nocturnal Opera