Shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection
The Times ‘Breakthrough Artist’ Poetry Nominee for the Sky Arts Awards
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize
‘AS COMPELLING AS ANY THRILLER’ – The Sunday Times
‘A TRAILBLAZING, GENRE-DEFYING COUP-DE-MAÎTRE OF A BOOK… DARK, ADDICTIVE AND DECEPTIVELY ERUDITE’ 5 stars – The Telegraph
‘FREARS’S WRITING IS LIKE LIGHTNING – FAST, CRACKLING AND ILLUMINATING’ – The Observer
“ALL THE HOT WOMEN I KNOW HAVE ELLA FREARS ON THEIR BEDSIDE TABLES.” —Sheena Patel
Taking the form of one long email addressed to an estate agent, Goodlord is a fictional memoir of habitation, a genre-defying novelistic text that beautifully evokes the people and places of our lives——the spaces of work, those that may or may not be ‘home’, sites of trauma and ecstasy. Showing all the control of voice one would expect from a poet of her rare skill, Ella Frears has created a book that is as funny as it is harrowing, and beautifully skewers the contemporary housing crisis while questioning the fundamental desires, drivers and disappointments that lie at the heart of our obsession with ‘property’.
Paperback: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/goodlord-ella-frears/7667932?ean=9781472159618
Limited edition hardback: https://roughtradebooks.com/products/goodlord-an-email-ella-frears
Shine, Darling
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/ella-frears/shine-darling/9781472159649
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation
Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
Ella Frears’s debut 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. The engine of Shine, Darling is one of strength, of fortitude in confronting and surviving the world, of a lifted-chin audacity – ‘There was pain,’ the speaker allows, ‘but it was not new pain.’ Frears’s work is world-weathered rather than world-weary, delighted by service stations, fucking 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. Her characters test each other, experimenting with the boundaries of physical violence, of punishment, of traps, all the while drawing the reader into a complicity that gives these poems all their daring, electrifying muscularity. 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.
(Offord Road Books 2020, Corsair 2025)
THE POETRY FRUIT MACHINE – poetry writing card game
You do not need to be a poet to play this game. You do not need to know anything about poetry, literature, or art to play this game. We believe anyone can write a truly brilliant poem.
POETRY FRUIT MACHINE contains:
• 54 poetry prompt cards with chance elements, inspiring instructions and perverse restrictions.
• 54 multiplayer versions for playing with friends and family.
• 54 Classic and mysterious fruit machine symbols illustrated by HATTIE STEWART – thousands of poetic combinations!
• An instruction booklet featuring a fun and informative glossary of poetic terms & more.
A must-have for any poet, or aspiring poet, anyone looking to up their writing game, or to take the edge off the blank page. For lovers of word games, dopamine and literary challenge.
Rough Trade Books 2021 (limited edition sold out)
Ella Frears’ I Am The Mother Cat charts, interrogates and attempts to take stock of what will surely come to be understood as one of the most surreal and haunting periods the country has known. Written as part of a residency at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, these poems talk of the strange absences of lockdown, the nature of work and socialisation, the urge to write and create, and what it means to look out for one another in a violent world. These ideas are shadowed, deepened, by their own opposites, deployed with wit and intelligence and Frears’ subtle musicality.
This special edition also includes a fold-out entitled ‘No Paintings, Sorry’ which features poems by John Hansard Gallery Assistants for National Poetry Day 2021.
Risplendi, Cara 2023
Italian translation of Shine, Darling – Risplendi, cara will be out with Taut Editori, June 2023. Translated by Lorenzo Mandelli
Ella Frears 