The Meaning of Things

Auteur

Elaine Randell was born in 1951 in south London, and now lives on Romney Marsh. She keeps Soay sheep, chickens and English Setter dogs. Rural life in Kent and Turkey, where she also has a home, is important to her. In the 1960s Elaine started Amazing Grace poetry magazine and subsequently Secret Books, publishing Tom Raworth, Allen Fisher, Paul Matthews and Barry MacSweeney, to the last of whom she was married from 1973-1979. Her first publication, Songs of Hesperus, appeared in 1972 and thirteen other books have appeared since. Selected Poemswas published by Shearsman in 2006, followed by Faulty Mothering (Shearsman, 2010), a book inspired by her work over many years with adoptive children and their families. Keen on collaborative work with other artists, her work Songs for the Sleepless, based on the work of Elizabeth Smart, was orchestrated by composer Bill Connors for the Llandudno Music Festival in 2006. A new book, Spilt Milk, is currently in preparation with the photographer and psychologist, Catherine Jacobs.Central to an appreciation of the poetry and prose of Elaine Randell is her work as a child and family psychotherapist and how she has carried the stories of trauma, hurt, love and recovery in both her mind and heart.

Texte du rabat

'Elaine Randell's writing was jump-started early by the outpouring of experimental small-press poetry and publishing that accompanied the emergence of pop art. That movement drew attention to the art-life divide by reducing it to a sharp but casual edginess. The poetry associated with this moment adopted informal means to freshen its reader relations across the same frontier. Randell's subsequent career in social work and psychotherapy has found her firmly on the side of life. The poems in The Meaning of Things, though making no such claims for their acts, are alive with the clear feeling, ethical tact, and rhythmical skill required to move rapidly back and forth along that borderline.' -Peter Robinson