ABOUT ELLIE
Ellie Rees is an award-winning writer who writes across many genres including poetry, creative non-fiction and memoir. Her work is widely published in various journals including: New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, The Lonely Crowd, Black Bough Poetry and The Broken Spine Artist Collective. Ellie’s work appears regularly online for Top Tweet Tuesday and she is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. Ellie’s first collection of poetry, Ticking, was published in 2021 by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and her second book, Modest Raptures won The Broken Spine’s inaugural Chapbook Competition in 2023.
Ellie Rees (then Mackintosh) was once told that she had a voice that ‘carried’ and was convinced that this meant she was destined to be a great actress. As a student at Exeter University and a member of the Dramatic Society, she did indeed appear for one night at The Liverpool Playhouse on Valentine’s Day, 1968.
Later she discovered that having ‘a voice that carried’ and a love of performing were great assets for a teacher. Marriage and the birth of two sons coincided with living in a Leicestershire village and sharing a smallholding with four other families. (An account, Mowsley, of living the ‘Good Life’ was shortlisted in Fish Publishing’s ‘short memoir’ competition in 2018.)
The family moved to Wales in 1983 and spent the next twenty-six years living and working at Atlantic College. Ellie was Head of Languages and taught hundreds of idealistic, bright young people, many of whom have gone on to significant careers in literature. She threatens to write the definitive novel about her time there. She loved the challenges posed by classes of students from such diverse backgrounds.
Zweli’s First Taste of Snow
There’s a certain leaden light –
significant for those who know.
Heads bent over books
only we Europeans raise an eye
querying the sky, and each other.
Those from nearer the equator
lean their chairs closer to radiators.
The gloom of the morning grows.
Ellie is still in touch with many of the ex-students from the College. She interviewed the writer Horatio Clare twice: once when he applied to Atlantic College aged sixteen; and for a second time in 2012, published in the online New Welsh Review issue 96.
But what happened to that ‘voice that carried’? It doesn’t become silent just because its owner has stopped using it to teach other people’s poetry or fiction. Ellie graduated with an MA in Creative Writing (distinction) from Swansea University in 2013 and a PhD, also in Creative Writing, in 2018. She has had memoirs, interviews, book reviews and essays published but her main interest is in poetry.
Modest Raptures by the brilliant poet @ellierees23, winner of our prestigious competition. In this captivating collection, each poem unveils moments of beauty, introspection, and the extraordinary found in the ordinary.
Wind-bitten primroses found under a tree; a delicate embrace of nature’s beauty. @ellierees23 captures the ephemeral moments that stir the soul. Get ready to be swept away in the enchantment of Modest Raptures.
The Broken Spine
A wonderful collection, finely crafted with haunting lines and beautiful word pictures. As Coleridge said ‘The best words in the best order.’ Book of the year for me.
Phil Carradice, poet, historian and novelist.
Modest Raptures is available from Amazon @ £7.99
To order a signed copy of Modest Raptures, please contact Ellie directly: ellierees23@btinternet.com
“Modest Raptures is in part a celebration of the natural world and in part an invitation. Through her Thomas Hardy like powers of observation, Rees enables us to experience her symbiotic relationship with the countryside and to share its sensory pleasures.”
“Quietly, precisely, these poems stitch together several kinds of journey, though the seasons, through convalescence and a spirited response to one’s own ageing, through an intimately known locality, till the life of a person is linked with that of a place.”
Philip Gross
You can order a copy of Ticking from:
The Hedgehog Poetry Press | Amazon
To order a signed copy of Ticking please contact Ellie directly: ellierees23@btinternet.com
“a moving, mature memoir (where) the landscapes of the Bristol Channel evoke tragedy and awaken a writer.”