Featured Poem: Eliza and the Bear by Eleanor Rees

Poet Eleanor Rees will be performing at the Bluecoat's Chapter and Verse literature festival and is currently exploring writing poems for performance by other people. She has kindly allowed us to publish her poem Eliza and the Bear in its entirety for National Poetry Day, which is today October 9th. She will be appearing at The Bluecoat alonside Michael Symmons Roberts and John McAuliffe on Sunday 19th of October from 4 – 6pm. 

I have previously performed my own work but I am becoming more interested in poems performed by performers who can add more range but also still maintain the poetic integrity of the piece.

I am also excited by music that is composed in direct collaboration with the writer. For 19th October Harpist Rebecca Sharp has composed new music in reponse to the text and the poem will be performed by performance artist, Cathy Butterworth.

It is promising to be a genuinely new and exciting event that has challenged my notion of what is possible with a poem in performance.

The poem itself is the title poem of my new book in progress Eliza and the Bear.