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Friday Poem – ‘[ correspondence : another year ]’ by Sammy Weaver

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘[ correspondence : another year ]’ by Sammy Weaver from her pamphlet Angola, America which won the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition.

This cover shows a geometric image of think white lines against black stripes. A gaping white hole is cut from the middle. The text reads: Angola, America. Sammy Weaver.

Angola, America, winner of the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2021, takes its name from a prison in Louisiana in the southern United Sates. In these strikingly original, thoroughly contemporary, and deeply moving poems, we are immersed in the world the inmates must endure. From the first poem, when we witness a home-made tattoo and understand that this scarring and incision is a “map in the connective tissue of pain and loss”, we are drawn into this world in a way that is carefully observed and beautifully empathetic.

[ correspondence : another year ] the grey static of the dashboard ignites into a ringtone ignites into a w oman’s voice pale-polite as a white picket fence in the still of morning: hello, this is a free call from ______ an incarcerated individual at louisiana state penitentiary, this call is not pr ivate & may be monitored, you may start the conversation now & the line ignites into song as you sing to me happy birthday & because birth is death in reverse i imag ine blowing a candle out backwards, sucking the orange talons into the prison of my lungs, the w ax congealing up the wick, the match lying down in its box, the rush of our bodies diminishing inside the bodies of our mothers

Angola, America is available on the Seren website: £6.00

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

Join us online from 7:30pm on Thursday 2nd February to hear Sammy Weaver reading from Angola, America alongside Kathryn Bevis at Seren Virtual First Thursday. Tickets are £2 (plus Eventbrite admin fee).

Book now
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Seren partners with Inclusive Journalism Cymru to publish book of non-fiction essays

Applications are now open for writers in Wales to submit essay proposals for Cymru and I, a book of 10 non-fiction essays written by members of Inclusive Journalism Cymru. 
Inclusive Journalism Cymru is an organisation that protects, supports, and represents people in Wales who’ve been marginalised or excluded by the journalism industry. This paid opportunity will see 10 of their members develop essays to be included in the book which will be published in 2023.
The application process is designed to be as open, inclusive and supportive as possible. There is no set theme or focus but the essays should aim to reflect something interesting and unique about the writers’s experiences of contemporary life in Wales. The invitation is deliberately open, because the editors want to hear new, unique and unexpected perspectives. Anyone who’s a member of Inclusive Journalism Cymru is welcome to apply, regardless of whether they’ve been published before. Becoming a member is free and only takes a few minutes. Visit their website to sign up. 
The book will include ten essays of around 7,000 words, but at this stage the editors are looking for 500 word proposals which set out your essay idea. This includes an example of what the first two paragraphs might look like, plus two more paragraphs explaining the theme(s) of the rest of the piece. Those first two paragraphs should give a sense of the style and approach of your writing in a way which shows originality and flair, whilst the explanation of the themes can be much more factual, setting out the ideas you want to explore and how you might do that.
In order to support writers with developing and submitting ideas, there will be an online Q&A at 7:30pm on Monday 6th February with the team from Inclusive Journalism Cymru and Seren. There you’ll be able to meet the editors, ask questions about the process or talk through an idea that you might already have.
Later in the process, there will also be a ‘Masterclass’ on longform writing with special guests Suyin Haynes – Head of Editorial at gal-dem – and Author and academic Professor Charlotte Williams. This will take place at 7.00pm on Wednesday 15th March.
If your idea is chosen for the book, you’ll be supported by a dedicated Editor from the Inclusive Journalism Cymru team who’ll work with you to make sure you have everything you need to help you produce your best possible work.
For full details of the project and information about how to apply, visit the Inclusive Journalism Cymru website. The information is also available in Welsh, although this is an English-language opportunity.
This project is supported by the Books Council of Wales.

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Friday Poem – ‘The Winter Park’ by Paul Henry

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘The Winter Park’ by Paul Henry from his collection As If To Sing.

This cover shows an abstract painting by the artist Antony Goble. A woman with blue skin dominates the image in a vibrant orange dress. She is balancing an urn on her head and holds a red crow in her hand. The text reads: As If To Sing, Paul Henry.

The power of song, to sustain the human spirit, resonates through As if to Sing. A trapped caver crawls back through songs to the sea; Welsh soldiers pack their hearts into a song on the eve of battle, ‘for safe-keeping’; a child crossing a bridge sings ‘a song with no beginning or end’… Rich in the musical lyricism admired by readers and fellow poets, As if to Sing is an essential addition to this Paul Henry’s compelling body of work.

“A poet at the top of his game.” – Radio Wales Review Show

The Winter Park Ten years now, since I left and the space between us widens so we’re ghostly when we meet and yes, the heart hardens. Our old life rarely haunts but can still surprise. This stone birdbath’s font for instance, suddenly ablaze with a ritual. The boys sail twigs in its brightness as you wait on a bench for me, to come back from the bookshop across the street – your weekly gift, these minutes alone, that pass into years, a small park’s blinding light, and you not waiting here.

As If To Sing is available on the Seren website £9.99

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

Watch Paul Henry reading from As If To Sing and performing songs from ‘The Glass Aisle’ on our AM Channel.

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Friday Poem – ‘Consider’ by Angela Graham

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Consider’ by Angela Graham from her collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere.

Sanctuary is – urgent. The pandemic has made people crave it; political crises are denying it to millions; the earth is no longer our haven. In Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere, Angela Graham and five other writers from Wales and Northern Ireland, addresses the many meanings of sanctuary from the inside. How we can save the earth, ourselves and others? How valid is the concept of a ‘holy’ place these days? Are any values still sacrosanct? We all deserve peace and security but can these be achieved without exploitation?

With Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, Mahyar, Csilla Toldy and Glen Wilson

Consider Why do you still call me ‘refugee’? Do you want me to be forever fleeing? I have fled. Now I am here, trying to keep both feet on the ground and find my balance. Sometimes I feel I have two hearts. One, the first-created − taut as a drum-skin in my chest − trembles at far-off shifts of energy in the fault-lines of the home I left. The other has grown itself around the first as lymph spreads on the surface of a wound; as albumen, fragile, tremulous, helps a new life mesh itself together somehow. I was a refugee. Now I am here where I have to do so much explaining, where I have to live so much on your terms and I am growing this second heart as bravely as I can. Where I came from will always be where I come from and now I come from − and so let me be − here.

Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere is currently: £4.99 in our January Sale

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Watch Angela Graham reading her poem ‘Home’ on our Youtube channel:

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Half-price January Sale – now ended

Clear away the January blues with the return of our half-price January Sale. From Friday 13th January, enjoy 50% off books across the Seren website* until midnight on Monday 16th January. 
Browse our poetry, fiction and non-fiction categories to find your next great read at half the price.
*Marked titles only, subject to availability. 

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Friday Poem – ‘This Year’ by Ben Wilkinson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘This Year’ by Ben Wilkinson from his collection Same Difference.

This cover shows an abstract painting made up of dark blues and greys with a face-like smudge in the centre. A splash of red, green and yellow flecks go up the left hand side. The text reads: Same Difference. Ben Wilkinson.

Carefully crafted, and charged with contemporary language, the poems in Same Difference play with poetic voice and the dramatic monologue, keeping us on our toes and asking just who is doing the talking. Throughout, Ben Wilkinson ‘steps into the shoes’ of French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (1844-96), reframing his voice for modern readers. Brimming with everyone from cage fighters and boy racers to cancer patients and whales in captivity, Same Difference is gritty, darkly ironic and often moving – a collection for our times.

This Year If we could gift each other moments I’d wrap up that bauble sun we felt warm our backs to the tip of Mam Tor. I’d box the two hours spent tracing the tinselled reservoir, no two miles the same as we ran and ran, trails deserted, no sound but our own good hearts and honest footfall. I’d ribbon that first jog up Ringinglow, this city held as if the snow globe we’d shake. And I’d nestle under the tree those loops of a floodlit track, a reminder that what’s done is done, and of dark-bright moments still to come.

Same Difference is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Watch Ben Wilkinson reading ‘This Year’ on our Youtube channel: