‘When I asked my dad about Warrenpoint’ from Siobhan Campbell’s book Cross-Talk, has been chosen by the Forward judges for inclusion in The Forward Book of Poetry 2011 just out from Faber. This poem was first published by Bernard O’Donoghue in Oxford Magazine. Siobhan is giving a Christmas reading from her work on December 16th at Galway City Library, 7.30pm, as part of Galway’s Over the Edge Reading Series

Join Mike Jenkins and Paul Henry at our final First Thursday poetry session of 2010, on 2nd December.
Mike will be reading from his latest collection Moor Music and Paul Henry will read from The Brittle Sea, his recently published collection of new and selected poems.

Followed by an Open Mic session for all poetry enthusiasts to showcase their work.
2nd December, 7.30pm. Media Point, Chapter Arts Centre, Canton Cardiff. £2 entry.
First Thursday is supported by Academi.

Poet Paul Henry presents a long-overdue celebration of the one of the greatest 20th century, W.S. Graham, on Radio 3 this weekend. Graham influenced the work of Harold Pinter and his genius was acknowledged by T.S Eliot. Born in Scotland, Graham lived most of his life in Cornwall. He influenced by Dylan Thomas and his poetry has a similar sense of rootedness in places that inspired Graham and speaks to people touched by the work of this brilliant poet, as he uncovers the reasons for relative obscurity.
 
Do Not Expect Applause in this week’s programme in the Special Feature series, Radio 3, Sunday 28th November 21.30 to 22.15
 

Seren join celebrations for National Short Story Week (22-28 Nov) by revisiting some great short stories collections, published over the last couple of years:
Sing Sorrow Sorrow: Dark and Chilling Tales (2010) Gwen Davies (ed.). A chilling collection of supernatural myth and otherworldly horror stories from some of Wales’ most exciting new and established authors.
Graham Mort Touch  (2010). From the heat of Africa to the warmth of France or the snowbound dales of northern England, this is an assured and absorbing collection.
Emyr Humphreys The Woman at the Window (2009) is an immensely enjoyable and impressive addition to his outstanding list of award-winning novels and short stories.
Glenda Beagan The Great Master of Ecstasy (2010) poignant new collection of interlinked short stories. In her clear and thoughtful prose Glenda explores memory, inspiration and mental health, peering over the edge of the natural world with sometimes chilling results.
Lloyd Jones My Favourite Colouring Book (2008) Love, angels, addiction and death; they’re all here in My First Colouring Book – a collection of short stories from the prize-winning author of Mr Cassini and Mr Vogel.

TS Eliot Shortlisted poet Pascale Petit has recommended Seren title, Women’s Work edited by Eva Salzman & Amy Wack.
In Inpress’s online newsletter, Petit chose four titles including Women’s Work. Petit whose latest title What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo described the Seren title as somewhere to find modern women poets gathers in one capacious volume.
“Browsing through it [Women’s Work], I continually come across poems thats stop me in my tracks; that lead me to buy whole collections because the poem included in the anthology did that trick of making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The new Seren poet Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s poem Inroads did that on a recent browsing, as did the Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan’s Skin, just to mention two”.
Pascale Petit is reading at Tate Modern, Poetry from Arts on 29 November 19.45 – 20.45 (Free, no bookings taken)
 

Pascale Petit’s What the Water Gave Me is a book of the year in the Observer. Jackie Kay (Novelist) writes “Pascale’s poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life”.
What the Water Gave Me has also been shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize along side another Seren poet John Haynes with his latest collection You.
Pascale Petit’s other collections include The Huntress, The Treekeeper’s Tale  and The Zoo Father. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including three from Arts Council England.

Roshi Fernando, a contributor to Seren’s latest horror book ‘Sing Sorrow Sorrow, Dark and Chilling Tales’ won the 2009 Impress Prize for New Writers.
Award winning Roshi’s short story ‘Three Cuts’, a re-imagined Cinderella where an arranged marriage ends in blood bath is one of 22 new stories from Gwen Davies’s (Ed) anthology, Sing Sorrow Sorrow.
Sing Sorrow Sorrow is a chilling collection of supernatural myth and otherworldly horror stories from some of Wales’ most exciting new and established authors.
Roshi was awarded the prize for her composite novel, Homesick, which comprises a series of interlinked short stories abour a community of Sri Lankan immigrants.
 

Paul Henry’s The Black Guitar is The Guardian Blog’s ‘Poem of the Week’ where it is described as “a poem that includes lines that are barely lines from a poet with a beautiful economy to his writing”. Visit the website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/08/poem-of-the-week-paul-henry The poem is taken from The Brittle Sea: New and Selected Poems, available now from Seren.

The Mabinogion Series Launch was celebrated in style at the St David’s Hotel Cardiff, with all four authors and an enthusiastic audience. Owen Sheers, Russell Celyn Jones, Niall Griffiths and Gwyneth Lewis read and discussed their contemporary adaptations and re-workings of these ancient tales with Seren fiction editor, Penny Thomas.
Dating back centuries, the eleven stories in The Mabinogion bring us Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and their own view of the Island of Britain. There is enchantment and shape-shifting, conflict, peacemaking, love and betrayal. In this series comissoned by Seren, the old tales are at heart of the new. Each author reinvents a story in their own way, creating fresh, contemporary tales that speak to the reader as much of our own world as of events long gone.
Seren’s New Stories from the Mabinogion series launched to great acclaim in 2009, with the joint publications of Owen Sheers’s White Ravens and Russell Celyn Jones The Ninth Wave. The latest two novels in the series see leading writers Gwyneth Lewis and Niall Griffiths rework the medieval Welsh myth cycle with The Meat Tree and The Dreams of Max and Ronnie.
Praise for the Mabinogion books
‘Seren’s series of new stories inspired by the Mabinogion may be the greatest service to the Welsh national epic since Lady Charlotte Guest..’ the Guardian 2010
‘spellbinding’ The Financial Times 2009
‘Hauntingly imaginative’ Dannie Abse 2009