Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet, editor and critic. She has published five full-length collections of poetry, most recently ‘Erato’ (2019) and ‘Burying the Wren’ (2014) (both books were Poetry Book Society Recommendations and were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Roland Mathias prizes). Her Selected Poems, ‘What It’s Like To Be Alive’ was published in 2016 and was a PBS Special Commendation. Deryn has collaborated with several visual artists on projects, including the AHRC funded Poetry Beyond Text, the Poetry Society’s touring exhibition of women’s poetry and landscape Where We Begin to Look, and most recently, a commission by the Ledbury Festival based on the life of the memoirist Helen Thomas which resulted in a book and filmpoem, with the artist Charlotte Hodes, ‘And You, Helen’ . Their exhibition ‘The Errant Muse’ can be viewed here https://charlottehodes.com/downloads/errant.pdf
Critical work on women’s poetry can be found in ‘Consorting with Angels’ (2005) and the accompanying anthology ‘Modern Women Poets’ (2005). Most recently Deryn has focussed her interest in women’s poetry through a series of essay on trauma, repetition and music in the work of the poet Elizabeth Bishop. She has recently completed a monograph on the Portuguese artist Paula Rego, ‘The Art of Story’ (2019) which explores the relationship in her work between narrative and image. She works regularly with the Liverpool Arab Arts festival on collaborative projects between Yemeni writers and artists. She is the editor of the award winning Pavilion Poetry, an imprint of Liverpool University Press.