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Rhian Edwards’ Clueless Dogs is named Wales book of the year 2013. Rhian claimed the Roland Mathias Prize for Poetry ahead of fellow Seren author, Deryn Rees-Jones, (Burying the Wren) and Picador’s Samantha Wynn-Rhydderch (Banjo), before going on to be named as Winner of Wales Book of the Year 2013. Rhian also scooped the Peoples Choice Award at the awards ceremony held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
The Wales Book of the Year is awarded annually to the best Welsh and English-language works of literary criticism across three categories: Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. The winner of each category receives £2000 and goes forward to be considered for the Wales Book of the Year Award, with the overall winner receiving a further £6000.
The poems chronicle a fraught childhood in Bridgend, teenage lusts, student rivalries, damaged peers and tense situations. Although Clueless Dogs is Edwards’ first collection, it has been highly praised and was the Winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry 2011/12. It was also on the 2012 shortlist for the Forward Felix Dennis Prize for best first collection.
Those dogs aren’t so clueless after all!
Marianne Burton’s She Inserts the Key Shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection
Marianne Burton’s She Inserts the Key is on this years shortlist for the Forward Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, whilst Christopher Meredith’s ‘The Record Keepers’, taken from his collection Air Histories has been highly commended.
The awards are among the most coveted poetry prizes in Britain. Previous recipients of the First Collection award include Simon Armitage, Don Paterson, Kate Clanchy, Tishani Doshi and Sam Riviere. Seren authors Hilary Menos (who won in 2010) and Kathryn Simmonds (2008) have their second collections published this year.
The Winner will be announced in October and will receive a £5,000 prize.
Although this is her first full length book, Marianne is no stranger to awards. Her pamphlet The Devil’s Cut was a Poetry Book Society Choice in 2007 and she has won and been placed in a number of competitions including Mslexia, TLS, Edwin Morgan, Bridport, and Cardiff International.
