Books Books Books
Category: Bestsellers, Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 74
ISBN: 9781781721629
Publication date: February 15, 2014
Price: £9.99
Category: Bestsellers, Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 74
ISBN: 9781781721636
Publication date: February 15, 2014
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize 2014
Shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2014
“Joyful and dynamic – a collection that’ll make you laugh and make you think” – Costa Poetry Book Award Judges
My Family and Other Superheroes introduces a vibrant and unique new voice from Wales. The superheroes in question are a motley crew. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo – all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth.
Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism. If the author’s subjects have something in common with RS Thomas, or even Terry Street-era Douglas Dunn, his technique and approach owe at least as much to contemporary American poets like James Tate and David Wojahn.
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards’ first collection of poems, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren Books, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren Books, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and his poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2019. He received the Troubadour Prize in 2022 and the Ledbury Poetry Festival Prize in 2025. Jonathan has been poet-in-residence at Gladstone’s Library and at the Dylan Thomas Boathouse, Laugharne, a judge for the National Poetry Competition, the Wales Book of the Year and the Foyle Young Poets Award, and a Literature Wales mentor of emerging writers. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales, and is an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund.
