Ella Frears is a poet and artist based in London. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling, (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Goodlord, (Rough Trade Books, 2024) her new hybrid work which takes the form of one long email to an estate agent, is shortlisted for the Forward Prize and the Sky Arts Awards’ Times Breakthrough Artist of the Year.
In 2022, Ella was named first ever Poet in Residence for the Dartington Trust’s grade II listed Gardens, selected by Alice Oswald. She is a trustee and editor for Magma Poetry and has been Poet in Residence for the National Trust, Tate Britain, The John Hansard Gallery, K6 Gallery, SPUD (the Observatory), conservation organisation Back from the Brink, and was poet in residence at Royal Holloway University physics department, writing about the Cassini Space Mission.
Her collaborative installation with artist Ben Sanderson, The Six Pillars of Modernism, was on show at Tate St.Ives 2017-18, and Ella’s poems about the St Ives Modernists are currently on display at Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum & Garden.
Ella has had poetry published in the London Review of Books, the Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Ambit, The Rialto, and the Moth among others. In 2019, she was one of four finalists for the Arts Foundation Fellowship in Poetry and was commended in the National Poetry Competition.
Ella has taught poetry and creative writing for City Lit, as an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths University, as a Guest Lecturer for Falmouth University, and University East London, as well as running freelance workshops for various spaces and organisations including Arvon, the Guardian, the Poetry School, the Poetry Society, Kew Gardens, Dartington, and Spread the Word.
In 2023 Ella was Creative Fellow at Exeter University working with the Maritime Environmental History Department.
She is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow for the Courtauld Institute of Art, and hosts chat and music show Tears for Frears on Soho Radio.