Rebecca Bird

Poet | Writer | Editor

Writing CV

PUBLICATIONS

2017 'Shrinking Ultraviolet' (London, Eyewear Publishing)

SELECTED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

Rebecca Bird has been published, or has work forthcoming in And Other Poems, Antiphon, Bare Fiction, The Bakery, Cake, Coffee House, The Crane Papers, Envoi, The English Chicago Review, Eunoia Review, Four and Twenty, Glitterwolf, Ink Sweat and Tears, HARK, The Interpreter’s House, The New Writer, Ofi Press (Mexico City), The Poetry Shed, Poetry Quarterly, Prole, The Rialto, The Stare’s Nest, Under the Radar, The Whistling Fire, The Best of British Poetry and Crystal Voices – Crystal Clear Creators’ 10th Anniversary Anthology.

Poems available online:
The Poetry Shed
Ink, Sweat and Tears
And Other Poems
Antiphon

ANTHOLOGIES

2015 Crystal Voices: 10 Years of Crystal Clear Creators (available here)

OTHER

2017 Short story, 'Good Little Awakenings' published by Litro

2017 Named by the Huffington Post as one of the British Poets to Watch 2017

2015 Nominated by Under the Radar for the Pushcart Best Single Poem Prize 2015

2014 Nominated by the Ofi Press for the Pushcart Prize 2014

2013 Editor of Hinterland Journal of Contemporary Poetry

2013 Contributor for Planet Ivy

2013 Reviewer at Sphinx

2013 Session Guitarist/Songwriter, with various artists

PERFORMANCES

2017 Words and Jazz, Dalston, special guest performance

2017 Shindig! At the Western, Leicester, featured guest

2014 Bossa, Leicester, special guest performance

2014 Shindig! At The Western, Leicester, featured guest

2013 UniSlam!, Birmingham University, 27th October

2013 Emergency! At the Y, Y Theatre, Leicester, 7th November

EDUCATION

2011 - 2014 BA (Hons) Creative Writing with English - De Montfort University, First Class Honours

COMMENTS

Rebecca Bird's poems are fine cut-glass: transparent, elegant, and sharp-edged. There's a tensile quality to them, as if the language has been pulled to the point of breaking; a new-minted quality to the images that makes the experience of reading them at once so challenging and rewarding. She is an excellent lyric poet, attuned to all the possibilities of what can be done in that form; an outstanding new talent marked by its intelligence, subtlety, and confidence.”

Ian Parks

wry, sharp and well-observed”

Gary Longden

Genuine lyrical flair, vivid image construction, inventive phrasing; cadence is nuanced and natural. ('the dance of the intellect amongst words' as Pound would have it)

Simon Perril

I was struck first by the energy, economy and sparkling clarity of the imagery of Rebecca's poetry during a performance at one of Leicester's regular Shindig! poetry nights”

Roy Marshall

Rebecca Bird's 'Some Lovers Try Positions They Can't Handle' is a beautifully fluid, imagery dense poem that I instantly fell in love with. The descriptions are slippery, as soft as breath or touch.”

Wendy Pratt

Witty and makes a great cappuccino!”

Kevin Cheung

Poems

Moment Magnitude

With thanks to Maria Taylor & Jonathan Taylor

The world is the same since I became a woman, though
I am now alive enough to walk across it. Columbus thinks

the sphere has doughed; is more malleable, maybe God
has returned with his steam iron and pushed the oceans

further out so we always have something to walk towards.
I think Atlas has far less to hold nowadays but the shape

is the same. Because I feel her now. The thin sutra of dark
jangling under my bones as she turns, a subway carriage,

volcanoes heating up their soups, punch-drunk
and plosive; continents spinning off past each other

on finest china, I see the entirety, this earth of ours:
turning slowly because we know we are the only ones

and no one has yet to catch up.

Golden Gate Pt 2

With thanks to Albert Abonado, The Bakery

It is 2am little bird and the cars are passing by like afternoons
a sleepy one every now and then and the frost has deepened

like a voice across town you are perched
in your uncle’s coat hug-warm a bridge rotting beneath

already wondering how you’d look pressed into silt.
If I could reach from my window I would pluck you out

and brush the dark from your knees I need to know
sweet bird did you leave a note? and does it tell me

what you see in the water
and what the water sees in you