Poetry
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781854115355
Publication date: November 1, 2010
Price: £8.99
In this innovative new book of poetry Mike Jenkins continues his life-long obsession with the history and fate of Wales, embodied, in this instance by both the glories of the landscape and the depredations suffered by the old industrial valleys in their years of decline. In contrast, his career in teaching left him with a sense of optimism about young people, about the prospect of change and with an eagerness to embrace changing times. These poems, like his prize-winning short stories, are full of colourful characters, dialogue, and incident. His sensitive awareness of the natural world, or what is available of the natural world in an urban context, is also frequently poignant.
Author of seven previous poetry collections for Seren he has also published a novel The Fugitive Three, published by (Cinnamon Press 2008) and a collection of short fiction Child of Dust (Gomer). He has also published work for children, two novellas called Barbsmashive and the latest The Climbing Tree (both Pont) and a collection of poetry – Poems for Underage Thinkers (Pont) .
Listen to Mike Jenkins read his poem, ‘Einstein at the Comp’:
Mike Jenkins
Mike Jenkins is now a full-time writer and teacher of Creative Writing, after spending over 30 years teaching in Secondary education.
He is former editor of Poetry Wales and is co-editor and founder of Red Poets magazine, which has been going for 15 years. He has won an Eric Gregory Award, Welsh Arts Council Young Writers’ Prize, John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry and, in 1998, the Wales Book of the Year for Wanting to Belong ( Seren ), a book of interlinked stories which was subsequently made into a drama for BBC Wales and also dramatised for a Channel 4 education programme. His novella for teenagers The Climbing Tree was published by Pont in February 2010.
He has appeared at the Hay Festival and Aldeburgh Festivals, has had a BBC programme dedicated to his work, and has read many of his poems on TV and Radio. He has his own website and ‘blogs’ on a regular basis.
A number of his stories have been adapted for radio and he writes regularly for the Cardiff City FC fanzine Watch the Bluebirds Fly and the political magazine Celyn ( left-leaning) where he reviews music from Wales. He also organizes a monthly poetry event in Merthry which includes a guest reader and an ‘open mic’ element.
At present, he’s working on another novel for teenagers and a series of prose-poems based on Welsh idioms in collaboration with Merthyr artist Michael Gustavius Payne.
He lives in Merthyr with wife Marie , who is a teacher, and his younger daughter. His older daughter is a Plaid Cymru AM and his son a reporter on the Politics Show.
