Eleanor Rees

Eleanor Rees was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in 1978. In 2002, her pamphlet collection Feeding Fire received an Eric Gregory Award, and her new poetry collection, Andraste’s Hair, is published by Salt in July 2007. She works in the community as a poet, running writing workshops for The Windows Project and also teaches in higher education. Eleanor is a member of the Word Hoard, Huddersfield and often collaborates with other writers, musicians and artists. She lives in Liverpool.

Eleanor Rees comes from ‘over the water’, and her poems seem to issue from a lyric country where they do things differently. Instinctive, elemental, limber and ready for anything, they twist and coil marvellously between inner and outer worlds, never resting for long in either, always beguiling or unsettling the reader - Paul Farley

Night River

East to west, west to east,
wetness crawls

the promenade wall.
Oil and chemical, salt and tar:

the night is in my throat.

I consume distances
at the edge of the river,

three am, solitary
held only by the rain and the sky.

The wind’s touch is courageous.

The stars are stags,
antlers pointed at each new shore

sailors discover
far from here, in some sunny waters.

I open to it like a mouth

and sense her shining
full height on the horizon,

as if the horizon is a ledge
she balances upon,

and hovering I rush to her,
her starriness, her electric pulses

that beckon, she widens:

I immerse myself in her thighs.
Her whiteness, her size.

I am her: the sea is a boat.
We ride until the dawn.

Andraste’s Hair is published by Salt.