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Friday Poem – ‘Gifts’ by Damian Walford Davies

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Gifts’ by Damian Walford Davies which appears in his collection Docklands: A Ghost Story.

A disquieting fin-de-siècle ghost story in verse, Docklands explores grey worlds at the edges of the eye, conjuring late-Victorian Cardiff’s hustling, booming, sullied docks –and the horrors they conceal. A study of the violences perpetrated against wives and daughters, and of patterns of grief and longing, this disturbing sequence summons lost children and dark desires.

 

 

 

 

Docklands: A Ghost Story is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Severn Bore’ by Catherine Fisher

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Severn Bore’ by Catherine Fisher which first appeared in her 1988 collection Immrama, and later in our regional pamphlet Poems from The Borders.

Poems from The Borders is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. Featured poems range from “the spine of the A470”, through Monmouthshire, over the dramatic Brecon Beacons, and also through the Black Mountains towards Hay-on-Wye, towns in Herefordshire and Radnorshire and along rivers, the Wye and Severn.​

 

 

 

 

 

A prolific, popular and prize-winning author of fantasy fiction, Catherine began her career as a poet, and returned to poetry earlier this year with her collection The Bramble King. Her first collection since 1999, it is full of darkly resonant tales ingenious parables, curiously haunted rooms and palaces, and beautifully observed images of the natural world.

The Bramble King is available on the Seren website: £9.99

 

Poems from The Borders is available on the Seren website: £5

Immrama is available on the Seren website: £3.95

Next Wednesday (28 August), Catherine will be at The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye alongside our poetry editor Amy Wack to read from Poems from The Borders. They will be joined by Christopher Meredith, Maggie Harris, Rhiannon Hooson, Emma van Woerkom, Charlie Wilkinson, Nicholas Murray, Nicholas Whitehead and Bob Walton. Find out more here.

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Friday Poem – ‘Taken for Pearls’ by Tony Curtis

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Taken for Pearls’ by Tony Curtis which appears in our regional pamphlet Poems from Pembrokeshire.

Last week Tony read poems from the pamphlet alongside Amy Wack at the Llangwm Literature Festival as part of the Poems from Pembrokeshire tour. The next stop is the Tenby Museum on Wednesday 21 August where Tony and Amy will be joined by several other poets for another afternoon of readings.

Poems from Pembrokeshire is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. An area of supreme but also disquieting beauty, Pembrokeshire has been the home to saints and pirates, the cradle of Tudor Kings and subject to oil spills and annual invasions of summer visitors. The undeniable loveliness of its off-shore islands: Ramsey, Grassholm, and Caldey, contrasts with the often harsh life of settlers, of monks and sea-fishing folk of the past, such as the stoic ‘Boatmen’ of Tenby.

 

 

Poems from Pembrokeshire is available on the Seren website: £5

Did you know? All of our regional pamphlets come with an envelope and a post card making them the perfect gift – keep them for yourself or send to a loved one. View the full range here. 

Can’t make the reading of Poems from Pembrokeshire at the Tenby Museum? Amy Wack will also be at the Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye on Wednesday 28 August reading from Poems from The Borders. Find out more here.

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.

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Friday Poem – ‘Caldey Island’ by David Hodges

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Caldey Island’ by David Hodges which appears in our regional pamphlet Poems from Pembrokeshire. We hope everyone stays safe as we brace ourselves for stormy weather.

This month, our poetry editor Amy Wack is taking Poems from Pembrokeshire on tour. You can catch readings from the pamphlet at several venues over the next few weeks. The next event is at 12:30pm today at Llangwm Literary Festival in the Big Marquee. We will also be at Tenby Museum on Wednesday 21st August.

Poems from Pembrokeshire is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. An area of supreme but also disquieting beauty, Pembrokeshire has been the home to saints and pirates, the cradle of Tudor Kings and subject to oil spills and annual invasions of summer visitors. The undeniable loveliness of its off-shore islands: Ramsey, Grassholm, and Caldey, contrasts with the often harsh life of settlers, of monks and sea-fishing folk of the past, such as the stoic ‘Boatmen’ of Tenby.

 

 

Poems from Pembrokeshire is available on the Seren website: £5

Did you know? All of our regional pamphlets come with an envelope and a post card making them the perfect gift – keep them for yourself or send to a loved one. View the full range here. 

Can’t make a reading from Poems from Pembrokeshire? Amy Wack will also be at the Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye on Wednesday 28 August for readings from Poems from The Borders. Find out more here.

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.

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Friday Poem – ‘Care’ by Claire Williamson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Care’ by Claire Williamson which recently received special mention in the  Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (May 2019), with the judges calling it ‘A beautiful image of fragility, of vulnerability.’

Visiting the Minotaur Claire Williamson

Claire’s collection Visiting the Minotaur was published by Seren in 2018. In this inventive and intensely felt collection, the poet enters a labyrinth of her own complicated family history, a history beset with secrets and lies, in order to come to terms with her own identity.  She borrows from myths, histories, careful observations of nature, and of city life, in order to fashion her artful meditations on experience and mortality.

 

Visiting the Minotaur is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.