Rachel Pantechnicon

Rachel Pantechnicon

Rachel Pantechnicon is a poet from Essex, born in 1965. She begins reading her poems in public in May 1997, at an Adult Learners’ day at Centre Court in Wimbledon shopping precinct, where the performance is partly drowned out by the escalators. After that, she continues to perform her verse in a range of unusual venues, including a Chinese men-only club in Trafalgar Square and a location in the Lake District where she shares a bill with a human-sized dancing crow.

Early life and work

Her early education includes board school and secretarial art college. As a child, she wins Best Essay prizes, including one for a piece that imagines a park bench with human feelings and another that reverses the idea, giving a human park bench feelings. Her mother buys her a Collins Rhyming Dictionary and tests her on it daily.

Before and alongside her writing, she has a period as a life model for the covers of historical romantic-fiction books. She also works long term as a manual typist at the Green Shield Stamps factory in south-west London.

Writing and performance

Her poetry is presented as important for its words, imagery and rhythms, with the rhythms said to be influenced by the treadling movements of her cat, Harold. She has an ongoing sideline as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, creating characters including Cheesegrater Leg-Iron Lion, the Three Coalscuttles and the young maidservant Michelle.

She lives in Motspur Park with Harold. She is working on a dialect study of the word “treadle”.