Eloise Bruce
Art Form(s):Artist Statement
I am engaged with the public nature of poetry and how it exists as a conversation. In a world where conversations recycle, it is important to create a new conversation with each poem. I am aiming for transformation in my reader or listener. As to the spoken aspects of my work, performing alone or with Cool Women, I am increasingly sensitive to the sounds of poetry and to how one poem resonates off another, creating a conversation that is happening because of one poem’s positioning next to another.
Artist Bio
Eloise Bruce grew up in Florida and has been a teaching artist for 40 years. She was the first education director for the Asolo Theatre/The State Theatre of Florida, directed for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, founded the Idaho Theatre for Youth, and was Artistic Director of Creative Theater in Princeton, NJ. In 2004 her first book of poetry, Rattle, was published by CavenKerry Press. Over the years she has had various roles at the Frost Place Center for Poetry and the Arts in Franconia, NH. She is a member of the poetry critique and performance group Cool Women and works as a teaching artist for Young Audiences NJ & Eastern PA and Writer’s Theatre of NJ. She also teaches multi-genre writing to middle school writers at the Arts and Education Center. Bruce is dedicated to expanding the role of the arts in education through her work with the Foundation for Educators and Scholars. She is youth editor for RavensPerch magazine.