Expose & Disclose
Event WebsitePoet Ella Frears teaches a one-day workshop on writing reflectively, for writers of all levels of experience. Expect a mix of low-pressure writing exercises and discussions of poems with Dartington gardens’ poet in residence.
“The course will focus on how we draw from our lives in our work, but also on those beautiful moments where truth and fiction begin to merge,” says Frears. “It’s a chance for people to discover poetry, fall back in love with it, or deepen their understanding of their practice. It should be fun and inclusive.”
Frears’ debut, Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books, 2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Recently named the first ever poet in residence for Dartington’s gardens, she is a trustee and editor for Magma poetry magazine and has been poet in residence for Tate Britain, the National Trust, Royal Holloway University physics department, and the John Hansard Gallery, among others. Her poems about the St Ives Modernists are currently on show at Tate St Ives.
Shine, Darling is a collection of wry, vivid poems whose power lies in their intimacy. They are as insistent as they are circumspect, drawing close to the reader’s ear and bringing them into confidence. Frears’s work is world-weathered rather than world-weary, delighted by service stations, steamy liaisons on bins in Cornwall, in constant communion with the moon. It lives for the power-play of people, of the pull of the sea, the smoky air – ‘stormy, sticky with flies’ – and tangled underbrush where the land ends. In Shine, Darling, the desire to expose and disclose wrestles with defence and defiance. The result is exhilarating, a ‘glorious full-bodied’ debut collection with the draw of an adamant tide.
