Poetry
In her debut pamphlet North by Northnorth, Elvire Roberts goes off-compass to find the vanishing point towards True North.
She treads her way through queerness in all its meanings: eccentric, Queer, questionable, unwell and downright weird. Her poems ask how a person can bear to be in this world and still find true expression of themselves in their complex flux of identities. There is guidance from Daoism and Buddhism, but above all from the natural world, as questions shapeshift to emerge as insects, mammals, cephalopods, birds. At its heart, North by Northnorth asks how the human animal can move from surviving to thriving. It is published by Five Leaves Press and available via Five Leaves bookshop. |
Elvire writes from a physiological reimagining of emotion, often through the animal, vegetable and mineral. Her poems have appeared in a range of publications including 14 Magazine, Dark Mountain, Envoi, Finished Creatures, Magma, Reliquiae, The Rialto, Strix, Tentacular and the Candlestick Press anthology Ten Poems About Getting Older.
She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University in 2016, going on to be mentored by Professor Harriet Tarlo as part of Writing East Midlands mentoring scheme in 2018. She performs many of her poems from memory to allow words to find a different life off the page. |
Beginning in February 2020 and throughout the pandemic, Elvire worked with Rachel Goodman to write an entirely co-created poetry book called Knee to Knee. It is available for order from Dialect Press.
They question the ways in which women have been written over a lifetime, asking - are they fit for purpose? They rip up the rule book, ditching versions of self that have pinned them to the page. What emerges is a witty, raw, sometimes heart-wrenching invitation to inhabit this world in a new language. Read here on Dialect's blog how they approached the collaboration; and here on Poetry Wales website how they wrote one of the poems that they later edited out of the final book. |
EVENTS
Finding the Words (Explore York Library) Thurs 25th April 2024, 7:00pm (BST) Online performance of poems from North by Northnorth |
The Passion of the Rabbit with Hongwei Bao 包宏偉 together with Rachel Goodman and Elvire Roberts
Mon 6th May 2024, 7:00pm (BST) Five Leaves Bookshop, 14a Long Row, Nottingham, NG1 2DH. Free but only a few places remaining. Book here. |