Dr Rebecca Tamás’ poetry in focus: on stage at the Barbican and acquired by award-winning publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions • City, University of London

Dr Rebecca Tamás, Lecturer in Creative Writing, discusses the surprising journey of creative works.

By Eve Lacroix (Senior Communications Officer), Published Friday, 20^th September 2024 (Updated Friday, 27^th September 2024)

“A literary work has a long life after it's published,” said Dr Rebecca Tamás, Lecturer in Creative Writing at City St George’s, University of London. “People will keep reading it and connecting with it, and you will continue to forge creative relationships through the work long after it came out.”

Poems from Dr Tamás’ 2019 poetry collection WITCH were adapted into a modern operatic song cycle titled 'Spell Book' by composer Freya Waley-Cohen. Earlier this year, Waley-Cohen presented a performance of this song cycle at the Barbican, performed by the orchestra The Manchester Collective.

Dr Tamás hopes her students will remain open to these unexpected relationships and urges fellow writers to be willing to collaborate with artists from other artforms. These collaborations can illuminate something new about their work and help it reach new audiences.

“Even now, students will contact me who are writing about my book for their thesis, or translators will get in touch to translate some of the poems, and it’s a reminder that the work has its own life and its own journey,” she added.

Watching her poetry turned into a musical performance was “a complete thrill.” She said:

After your launch and the first flurry of reviews and events, you might think that your book's lifespan is over, but that's far from true.
It felt strange, intimate and wonderful to see my work transformed into stunning music.
There's something uniquely intimate and exciting about your own words being transmogrified into a new artform through a new mind.
It's shown me fresh aspects of the poems I didn't know were there. It's also really special that my book has inspired work that goes far beyond me, that adds to the poetic world that was already there.

Dr Tamás’ poetry has attracted further attention: earlier this year, her works were acquired as part of the first poetry list launched by the reputed publishing house Fitzcarraldo Editions. The independent publishing house, which launched in 2014, is home to four Nobel Prize in Literature laureates. The poetry list will be edited by Rachael Allen, and Dr Tamás’ second book of poetry is due to be published in 2025.

Dr Tamás teaches creative writing and creative nonfiction to both undergraduate and postgraduate students at City St George’s. She is a poet and a writer of essays and environmental creative nonfiction. She brings her practice of each medium into her teaching.

She is particularly interested in the relationship between the human and natural world and co-runs the interdisciplinary environmental project 'Degrowth Futures,' with Dr Jeremy Moulton, Lecturer in Politics at York University. She said:

In my own writing and research, I'm working on a new creative nonfiction book about the relationship between seasonal ritual and our connection to the natural world.
It's another book focused on environmental issues, with a thread of memoir running through it. I've been travelling all over the country attending folkloric or pagan rituals – May Day in Padstow, and Imbolc at Butser Ancient Farm – which has been a fascinating experience.

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