Tales of Winter :
Poetry & Storytelling
Open Mic Night

/ Rachel McCrum, poet & performer

Rachel McCrum is originally from Northern Ireland and has lived in Montréal, Québec, since 2017. From 2010 to 2016, she was based in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she was the first BBC Scotland Poet-in-Residence, Broad of cult spoken word cabaret Rally & Broad, co-founder of Stewed Rhubarb Press, and recipient of a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Her first solo show Do Not Alight Here Again was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has toured and taught poetry and performance in Ireland, Scotland, England, Greece, South Africa, Haiti, and Canada.

Her first collection The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate (Stewed Rhubarb Press, 2018) was published in a bilingual edition with Mémoire d'encrier in 2020, as Le premier coup de clairon pour réveiller les femmes immorales (finalist for 2022 Cole Foundation Translation Prize from the Quebec Writers’ Federation, for the translation by Jonathan Lamy). With spoken word artist Amélie Prévost, she co-wrote and co-performed in La belle-mère//The Stepmother. The show had its premiere in Montreal in September 2024, and is now available as a bilingual edition from L’Hexagone. She is the vocalist for poetry-noise group Pigs&Wolves. Their debut EP The Unfortunate Waggle came out in October 2024.