The Meaning of Things

Elaine Randell was born in 1951 in south London, she has lived on Romney Marsh for many years now keeping Soay sheep, chickens and English Setter dogs on a small holding and large historic garden with her husband Ian Rose. They have three daughters, Phoebe, Beatrice and Naomi. Rural life and gardening, in Kent and Turkey, where she also has a home, plays an important part of daily life. In the 1960s Elaine started 'Amazing Grace' poetry magazine and subsequently Secret Books. Over this time she published work by James Kirkup, Jeremy Reed, Jeff Nuttall, Nicholas Moore, Mike Horovitz, Tom Raworth, Allen Fisher, Tony Lopez, Paul Matthews and Barry MacSweeney to the last of whom she was married from 1973-1979. Her first publication, 'Songs of Hesperus', appeared in 1972 and fourteen other books by small presses have appeared since. 'Gut Reaction', prose pieces was published by North and South in 1987, 'Selected Poems' by Shearsman Books in 2006, followed by 'Faulty Mothering' (2010), a book inspired by her work over many years with adoptive children and their families. Keen on collaborative work with other artists, her work 'Songs for the Sleepless', based on the work of Elizabeth Smart, was orchestrated by composer Bill Connors for the Llandudno Music Festival in 2006. A volume of poems and prose, 'The Meaning of Things', followed in 2017. Central to an appreciation of the poetry and prose of Elaine Randell is her continued work as a child and family psychotherapist and how she has carried the stories of trauma, hurt, love and importantly, humour and recovery, in both mind and heart.