The Callister Garden, Birkenhead

16th June 2024

2.30 - 4.00 pm including Afternoon Tea

Join local poet, Eleanor Rees for a promenade poetry reading from her recent collection ‘Tam Lin of the Winter Park’ (Guillemot, 2022) which explores the magical gardens of a local parkland and a restorative connection with nature. The reading will take the form of a guided walk around the garden, reading poems chosen for each location. Eleanor will also present a new poem written for Callister Gardens.

Guests are  invited to bring a poem of their own, either by themselves, or a favourite on the theme of rest, recuperation, nature and gardens to read as part of the event.

Chairs will be provided at each location and the walk will conclude with tea and cake on the lawn provided by The Callister Trust.

Copies of Eleanor’s collections of poetry will be for sale.

The event is FREE and supported by Liverpool Hope University where Dr Eleanor Rees is senior lecturer in creative writing in the School of Humanities.

Please book a ticket as spaces are very limited:

Biography:

An internationally recognised poet, Eleanor Rees was born in Birkenhead. She has published five collections of poetry, Tam Lin of the Winter Park (Guillemot Press, 2022), The Well at Winter Solstice(Salt, 2019), Blood Child (Pavilion, 2015), Eliza and the Bear (Salt, 2009), and Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Selections of Eleanor’s poems have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Lithuanian, Slovak and Romanian. (Versopolis, 2016, 2019, 2024). She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, an Irish Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award and a Northern Writers’ Award and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Liverpool Hope University in the School of Humanities.

‘Rees has an outstanding ability to act as a conduit between past and present …uninterrupted by poetic ego or personal agenda. She slips like silt between and into different forms: seagull, mineral, light. A diver into – and retriever of – other realms and substances, she is made of mud ‘so otherly, otherly’. – Nicky Arscott, Poetry Wales

‘These are poems written in a state of grace, trusting in the infinite wisdom of the universe. And Rees gives us hope that all manner of things shall be well in the end, if we are only able to shift our vision.’ - Philosopher, Rosi Braidotti

‘The world, we feel from these poems, is living, breathing, and full of surprise. Even whilst “drinking tea” there “slither visions of plantations, tropical sunsets, blood”; as she dwells on these associations and interdependencies, transmuting them, then, into fine, finely wrought poems, Rees proves that words are magic, in poems that like “buttercups cradle the sun, / spark, are mirrors, yellow fire across the grass”. Recommended.’ – Mab Jones -Buzz Magazine