Ella Frears’ collection Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.
Ella has held a number of residencies including with the Dartington Trust gardens, Knole House in Kent (National Trust), Back from the Brink, Royal Holloway University’s physics department writing about the Cassini Spacecraft, and John Hansard Gallery in Southampton for which she wrote her experimental publication I AM THE MOTHER CAT, (Rough Trade Books, 2021). She was the Creative Fellow for the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at Exeter University 2023. Ella works at the intersection of poetry and visual art; mentoring visual artists who use text, as well as working across media herself. Her 2018 collaborative installation with artist Ben Sanderson involving a large ‘modernist’ carpet, The Six Pillars of Modernism, was on show at Tate St Ives. Ella has performed her work nationally and internationally including performances at the Chisenhale Gallery, the Design Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, for Platform Nord in Kristiansand and at the Royal Festival Hall.
She has been an editor for Magma since 2014 as well as guest-editing the Rialto and Cornish Modern Poetries (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). Ella has taught creative writing for The Guardian, Goldsmiths University, City Lit, Dartington, the Arvon Foundation among many others. She hosts Tears for Frears, a quarterly show on Soho Radio about the moments – big, small and unexpected – that move us to tears.
