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Friday Poem – ‘43. When I open my ribs’ by Kim Moore

To celebrate her collection All The Men I Never Married being shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘43. When I open my ribs’ by Kim Moore.

This cover shows a collage image of the figure of a man made up of tiny pictures of nature. He is against a black background surrounded by butterflies. The text reads: All The Men I Never Married Kim Moore

Kim Moore’s eagerly awaited second collection All The Men I Never Married is pointedly feminist, challenging and keenly aware of the contradictions and complexities of desire. The 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love.

“All the Men I Never Married is a work of immense focus, intelligence and integrity.” – The Yorkshire Times

43. When I open my ribs a dragon flies out and when I open my mouth a sheep trots out and when I open my eyes silverfish crawl out and make for a place that’s not mine. When I open my fists two skylarks soar out and when I open my legs a horse gallops out and when I open my heart a wolf slips out and watches from beneath the trees. When I open my arms a hare jumps out and when I show you my wrists a shadow cries out and when I fall to my knees a tiger stalks out and will not answer to me. Now that the beasts that lived in my chest have turned tail and fled, now that I’m open and the sky has come in and left me with nothing but space, now that I’m ready to lie like a cross and wait for the ghost of him to float clear away, will my wild things come back, will the horse of my legs and the dragon of my ribs, and the gentle sheep which lived in my throat and the silverfish of my eyes and the skylarks of my hands and the wolf of my heart, will they all come back and live here again, now that he’s left, now I’ve said the word whisper it rape, now I’ve said the word whisper it shame, will my true ones, my wild, my truth, will my wild come back to me again?

All The Men I Never Married is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

Catch Kim at the Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival on the 30th July! She’ll be taking part in a session on Poetry & Empowerment and discussing The Result is What You See Today, an anthology about running which she co-edited with Paul Deaton and Ben Wilkinson. See the full programme and buy tickets at cardiffpoetryfestival.com. All our in person events are also being streamed online.

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Friday Poem – ‘The Artist Mixes Colour in the Renaissance’ by Rosalind Hudis

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The Artist Mixes Colour in the Renaissance’ by Rosalind Hudis from her collection Restorations.

This cover shows an abstract print of blue and red mountains blocking out the sky. The text reads: Restorations: Roaalind Hudis. "If a poem is like a picture, these are history paintings, rich in human detail and many-layered in their brushwork." – Matthew Francais

Inspired by the art restorer’s keen eye and by a vivid empathy for people and events, Restorations, is a journey through memory. Suffused with colour, inspired by thoughts of people and places, by artefacts and how the passage of time shifts perspectives and erodes surfaces, these poems are beautifully complex explorations, full of curiosity and the adventure of seeing and listening.

The Artist Mixes Colour in the Renaissance Don’t think of me as lime-robed and lost in undailiness; I come with sleeves rolled-up, worker in a mire of substance. Yes, I stink! I chew on a rotted wafer of dried fish glue my saliva in the mix. How else to stretch the hue of some frosty cleric? My paints are part kill: rabbit skin, horse hoof, pig’s blood. I knife, mine, grind, churn, pound, steep, sweat my way to that primal blue you worship. When you varnish me with meaning, remember the grit under my nails, the fumes. Green comes from the labour camps you made for your longing. And that hair-coiled girl resolved from light. She’s no touched-up pink fix. She took on the earth to coagulate: egg-yolk, red clay, mineral, old linen marble dust. Do you think, if she looked up she wouldn’t roar with the energy of her roots?

Restorations is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Kim Moore Shortlisted for Forward Prize for Best Collection

Congratulations to Kim Moore who has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection with her second collection All The Men I Never Married.
Published last October, All The Men I Never Married has been reviewed widely to much acclaim with The Yorkshire Times hailing it as “a work of immense focus, intelligence and integrity”. Pointedly feminist, challenging and keenly aware of the contradictions and complexities of desire, the 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love. 
All The Men I Never Married is shortlisted alongside four other collections, Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar, Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph, Cain Named the Animal by Shane McCrae and The Illustrated Woman by Helen Mort. The winner will be announced in a prize ceremony on the 28th November 2022 at the Contact Theatre in Manchester. 
Find out more about the Forward Prizes on the Forward Arts Foundation website www.forwardartsfoundation.org. 

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Friday Poem – ‘Dogwoman’ by Deryn Rees-Jones

This week’s Friday Poem is the opening page of the sequence ‘Dogwoman’ by Deryn Rees-Jones. ‘Dogwoman’ draws on the work of Portuguese artist Paula Rego, who passed away earlier this week. It first appeared in Deryn’s collection Burying the Wren, and later in What It’s Like to Be Alive: Selected Poems.

This cover shows a drawing by the artist Paula Rego of three children leaping in the air. The text reads: Deryn Rees-Jones What It's Like To Be Alive Selected Poems

What It’s Like to Be Alive: Selected Poems brings together poems from five of Deryn Rees-Jones’s early collections: The Memory Tray, Signs Round a Dead Body, Quiver, Burying the Wren, and And You, Helen. We see the arc of development in her writing as she visits and revisits the concerns that are the mainstay of her writing: memory, love, desire, and heartbreak in all its manifestations. The cover features a drawing by Paula Rego.

Dogwoman after Paula Rego No one can love this horror, no one can want it. I’m crouched between my own thighs, with my dog heart and my dog soul. For now I’m a woman brought up by dogs, bitch in the muck and the blood and the dirt. For once, now, I’ve got no words, and look – I’m trampling my bed, I’m baying at the moon. And no one can hear me, with my skirts pulled up, head back as my eyes roll. Look. I’m swallowing sorrow. No one can hear me in spite of the howls. * I am lying on my back, my legs outsplayed. That would be my dog-look, now, I’m giving you, my half-cock, something askance and going to hell, take me/leave me, inbreath, outbreath. Trembling, I’m all upturned. Heart-hit, flesh-bound, saying love love in a ring of devotion. Here’s my dogbelly with its small pink teats. I’m waiting for the pressure of your well-shaped hand. * Now dog’s the divine. Strange thought. Dancing on hind legs, head to one side, and the face of her master. Dog sudden, well-met. Dog sitting, dog listening, dog running with big joy and ghost dogs on the fields now with her. Dog blur, hellhound, dog shaking, hare-bound; dog in the wind, sky-bound. (Once, attendant in my blue dress, I hadn’t the words to call you back.) Dog in the snow, dog in the sea. Dog glorious, glories herself. Dog racing with gleam and thunder. Best friend. Neither fish nor fowl. Just for this moment hound bliss.

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What It’s Like to Be Alive is available on the Seren website: £12.99

Burying the Wren is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

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We’re partnering with Storyville Books for Independent Bookshop Week 2022

We’re delighted to announce that we’re partnering with Storyville Books in Pontypridd for Independent Bookshop Week 2022. Running from Saturday 18th – Saturday 25th June, Independent Bookshop Week is a great chance to support your local independent bookseller and celebrate what they do for their community. 
Storyville will be showcasing Seren books in store throughout the week and some of our local authors will be visiting the shop (watch this space for details). Our Sales Manager Simon will also be there on Wednesday 22nd June, getting some first hand experience as a book seller. He’ll also be pleased to chat about publishing, so pop in and say hello.
Storyville Books is Pontypridd’s only independent bookshop. Owned and run by Jeff and Cerith they are passionate booklovers bringing the latest fiction, non-fiction and the classics to the town. Find them at 8 Mill Street, Pontypridd, CF37 2SN or online at storyvillebooks.co.uk.
There will be events taking place in store throughout the week including an event with Angela V. John to discuss a new edition of Spring’s Green Shadow by Cecily Mackworth (published by Honno), and a visit from some local school children. You can also get your hands on a bookish goodie bag if you visit on the 25th June! ​
Find out how else to get involved in Independent Bookshop Week on the Books Are My Bag website.