About

Ellen McAteer, a poet and songwriter, is General Manager of Poetry London magazine, and the founder of tell it slant poetry bookshop in Glasgow. She is also on the Editorial Board of Gutter magazine. She was Director of the Poetry Trust in Suffolk, which ran the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, and continued to be involved with Poetry in Aldeburgh. She was also a former promoter with Martello music, and a visiting lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art. Her poetry pamphlet Honesty Mirror won First Prize in the New Writer annual prizes, and is published by Red Squirrel Press. She won the 2016 Waterstones Refugee Week Poetry Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Baker Prize and the Bridport Prize. She has performed at Poetry in Aldeburgh, completed a commission for Stanza Poetry Festival, and has been a featured poet at the Doune the Rabbithole festival and Truck Festival, among others. She recently won an Arts Council grant to develop her creative practice, and has recently completed a full-length poetry manuscript titledPsychogeographyas a result, under the mentorship of Rachel Long. She has had poetry and prose published in magazines and anthologies, and a play at the Edinburgh Fringe, later recorded for local radio.  Her song Blue Valentine won a BBC radio competition, and has been used in a  TV advert. She has been a visiting lecturer the University of Oxford Creative Writing MSt, a mentee of the Clydebuilt Verse Apprenticeship Scheme, under Alexander Hutchison, and a singer with the band Stone Tape. She was previously a member of Donny O’Rourke‘s poetry group, and has worked with Louise Welsh in her time as Writer-in-Residence at the Art School. She has been a director of the Scottish Writers’ Centre, and a member of the core group of performers at the Hammer & Tongue spoken word collective in Oxford.