Blog
22nd November, 2023
Seren Poetry Christmas Gift Guide
Welcome to Seren’s Poetry Christmas Gift Guide. Poetry is the ideal gift for lovers of words and stories. Find the perfect book for any poetry lover by browsing this list of specially curated titles or visiting our poetry pages.
Twelve Poems for Christmas, selected by Amy Wack.
This sparkling selection of Christmas poems is the perfect stocking filler for any poetry addict. These are poems full of feeling that resist cliché, that touch on classic ‘Christmas’ themes, but bring them to life from fresh perspectives. The pamphlet opens with Pippa Little’s lyrical and tender poem, ‘St. Leonore and the Robin’, and features poems both humorous and contemplative. Small enough to send with (or instead of) a card, this is the perfect festive treat for your loved ones.
Republic, Nerys Williams
What constitutes a republic? Not Wales, a nation subject to military claims on its landscape and a second home explosion which has hollowed out its communities. The achievement of a republic can be a subversive activity, as was the writing of Republic.
Republic is about class, culture and community in west Wales. It recounts the story of a young woman growing up listening to the post-punk music of the 1980s and indie labels of the 1990s. These decades culminated in the explosion of “Cŵl Cymru” and new devolutionary powers in Wales.
Viva Bartali!, Damian Walford Davies
Inspired by the lyrical, mythic mode of Italian sports journalism from the 1930s to the 1950s, Viva Bartali! is a biography-in-verse of the iconic Italian cyclist Gino Bartali (1914—2000), two-time winner of the Tour de France (1938, 1948), known both as ‘Gino the Pious’ because of his fervent Catholic faith, and as Ginettaccio (‘Gino the Terrible’), owing to the short shrift he so often gave the Press.
From amateur races to the professional one-day classics and on to Tour de France glory, Bartali is seen alongside his fellow riders as both vulnerable body and élite athlete; both cycling’s hard man and fond and bereaved father; both kneeling believer and climbing god.
In Orbit, Glyn Edwards
On receiving news of a beloved teacher’s death, a man struggles with the loss of a relationship sustained by deep admiration and unrequited love. Memories of their shared journey are separated in three orbits where the man’s past, present, and future are punctuated by intense grief.
In Orbit uses a variety of innovative forms to explore loss, from traditional stanzas to prose poems to shaped poems in the form of birds, circuits, or hands. The narrative shifts in time, moving from his teen years to the present day when he himself has become a teacher, working alongside the man he mourns.
The Turpentine Tree, Lynne Hjelmgaard
The Turpentine Tree is an enduring symbol of memory, fragile but enduring the passage of time and still persisting: in the title poem, Lynne Hjelmgaard describes it ‘a coppery faux god / with wildly twisted branches’. It might slip into the void, but here it is for now ‘flying into the eye of the storm.’ Hjelmgaard employs strong, sensuous imagery to capture moments from across her remarkable life.
You’ll Never Be Anyone Else, Rachael Clyne
Rachael Clyne’s You’ll Never Be Anyone Else presents a direct and assured voice, demanding that we think carefully about what it takes to reconcile being different. She advises the reader to ‘Stop drinking the poison / labelled “Hate me.” / It’s that simple. I didn’t say easy.’ Clyne also has an alter-ego “Girl Golem” reminiscent of a superhero but based on the mythical man made from clay and spells to protect Jewish people from persecution. Through this empowering persona, Clyne opens up an exploration of Jewish and lesbian identity. Surveying attitudes in the present day and in the past, these poems explore migrant heritage, sexual identity, domestic violence and ageing.
Into the Same Sound Twice, Zakia Carpenter-Hall
American poet Zakia Carpenter-Hall’s stunning debut Into the Same Sound Twice is a place where ‘the ordinary rules of motion’ don’t always apply. What ensues are words, bodies and environments that thrum with new music. In language that is at once precise and tender, Carpenter-Hall leads us into rituals of care, ancestral memory, a rainbow that coruscates and various forms of rupture and repair.
Borders can become meaningfully blurred. In ‘Shakespeare Honours My Grandmother’, a play’s burial scene merges with a funeral taking place four-thousand miles away. The language of dramaturgy is then used to describe both. ‘Big Talk’ counters the unfathomable vastness of space with the sensuality of a kiss. The collection creates its own multi-sensory language and landscape.
Homelands, Eric Ngalle Charles
In Homelands, his debut collection, Eric Ngalle Charles draws on his early life raised by the matriarchs of Cameroon, being sent to Moscow by human traffickers, and finding a new home in Wales. Rich in tone, subject and emotion, Charles’ poetry moves between the present and the past, between Africa and Europe, and between despair and hope. It discovers that historical injustices now play out in new forms, and that family tensions are as strong as the love within a family. Despite the difficulties Charles has faced, Homelands contains poems of fondness, warmth and humour and, as he returns to Cameroon to confront old ghosts, forgiveness.
God’s Little Artist, Sue Hubbard
God’s Little Artist is a biography in verse of Welsh painter Gwen John (1876 – 1939). As with many female painters of the time, John’s work was often overshadowed by that of her male contemporaries, especially her brother Augustus John. God’s Little Artist is a celebration of her passionate life and work, illustrated with precision, authenticity and the keen painterly eye of the poet, novelist and art critic Sue Hubbard.
“In fifty years’ time,” wrote the painter Augustus John, “I shall be remembered only as the brother of Gwen”. Now, nearly 100 years after Gwen John’s death, her younger brother’s prescient words don’t seem so surprising as her work experiences a resurrection alongside other previously neglected female artists.
Hollywood or Home, Kathryn Gray
Welcome to Kathryn Gray’s Hollywood or Home, a poetry collection with as much ruthless glamour as any Old Hollywood movie. These worldly-wise poems explore celebrity culture in a mode that is both seriously playful and playfully serious. Here, melancholy and humour, irony and sincerity can be often found in the same poem, creating a rich experience for the film buff or fan of celebrity culture, as the book is full of easter eggs and movie references
