April 2025 - Seren

Posted on April 25, 2025April 25, 2025 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Sleeping in a Shaking City’ by Cath Drake

Photo of a city as night falls, its lights streaked in the reflection on the river.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Sleeping in a Shaking City’ by Cath Drake from her collection The Shaking City.

Sleeping in a Shaking City
I’ll tell you how there is one chair then another and that’s called sitting together.
I’ll tell you about small things hidden under beds or in yoghurt containers dug into gardens.
About a stray cat who tiptoes across the back fence and through the tiny bathroom window.
I’ll tell you how thin I feel; how the rain falls and falls but still the charcoal stains won’t wash off.
Do you remember summers when cricket matches lasted forever and seagulls tacker-tacked on the roof?
Or watching ants for hours, imagining the risk of falling if each stair was so enormous?
How does a city gather its skirts before the dip of night? Its powerdrills and refrigeration whirring –
there must be somewhere in this town that doesn’t shudder, somewhere I can properly sleep.

Posted on April 18, 2025April 16, 2025 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘The opposite of Swedish death cleaning’ by Alison Binney

This week’s Friday Poem is the title poem from The Opposite of Swedish Death Cleaning by Alison Binney which was published this week.

The opposite of Swedish death cleaning
Lately, I conjure a woman in Stockholm
opening her father’s front door into laminate light, the scent of lemons. Crossing the hall to his study, she finds the folder marked Död in an otherwise empty desk, and heads for the kitchen – one chair, one mug, one teaspoon, one coffee filter left.
I want an antonym for döstädning, these days, for we are not Swedish, and this is messy, you in the home, not yet dead, me frisking your house for Ladybird books and egg cups, stamp albums, paperweights and pebbles,
for fifty nubs of Imperial Leather soap.
My Swedish double rinses her father’s mug, leaves it to drain while she makes a few calls, then slips it into her bag. Perhaps it will hold her toothbrush. Perhaps, on the train home, a line from a bedtime poem will hum
for a moment, then mumble itself to sleep.

Posted on April 11, 2025April 11, 2025 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – Opening of ‘I.M’ by Deryn Rees-Jones

Photo of a steaming cup of tea in a glass mug in the sunlight

This week’s Friday Poem is parts 1 & 2 of the long poem ‘I.M.’ by Deryn Rees-Jones from her collection Erato.

I.M.
*
Sometimes at Easter we’d drive west, stopping, makeshift, at our curious stations: once to put a bet on a horse –
once, slowed behind a whole village, a man dragging a man-sized cross. Now Easter
is come round again and I stand once more by a restless lough.Your body’s ashes drift: Carra, Corrib, the shores of Carrowmore. A landscape has become a conversation; mountains, godlike, touch my godlessness, Croagh Patrick stained by pilgrims’ feet. Darling, what did I leave when we left you where sky and water meet?
*
An old love is a kind of promise.
In the first rush of new unholy orders
there’s a wish to make a body limitless.
Now here’s a longing for my breast
to meet a mouth, for you again to slip your hands inside my heart and with a turn of limbs
to bring a rhyme of colour to my cheek.
Owl hoot, fox call.A phone rings
in a distant house. How to be one
in this strange equation? We drive together
in the dark. I mark a simple prosody
in making tea. Later, in each other’s ghostly arms, the radio will sing us both asleep.

Posted on April 4, 2025April 4, 2025 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘The Darkening’ by Kathryn Bevis

Photo of a dark sky with a few stars shining behind the clouds.

Following her memorial celebration earlier this week, today’s Friday Poem is ‘The Darkening’ by Kathryn Bevis from her collection The Butterfly House.

The Darkening
It started with glow worms and phosphorescent fish, their lights blown out like candles on a cake.At matinees, footlights swallowed themselves entire so we only guessed poor Gloucester’s eyes were gouged and heard Lear shake
his fists against the storm. Momentum took. Bulbs began to organise, to unionise, downed tools across the globe. Lighthouse beams refused to stroke the sea to sleep. Whole tower blocks played dead, their pupils blown.
By teatime, even the blood-lit freckles of TV standby LEDs had mutinied. Dentists’ lamps sat down, sat in, called sick. We blamed the manufacturers.We blamed the government. Streetlamps picketed the roads on which they lived.
We knew we were screwed when matches joined the strike, flints declined to spark, magnifying glasses wouldn’t catch. Oil lamps, tapers, flambeaux took up arms.
Conspiracy theorists had their day at last.
Ghosted by our darkened screens tonight, we are undone.We pray for dawn’s red eye to open, watch as stars put out their fires one by one by one.

This September, you’re invited to explore the unseen and the unsettling. From dark and menacing landscapes to the everyday terrors of domestic settings disturbingly close to home, these stories will horrify and delight in equal measure. Be prepared, for ‘this is a land of ancient power, and even more ancient beings...’ Pre-order the latest addition to our Welsh Gothic series, ‘Giving the Darkness Life’ on our website now.
.
Stories by @markblayney1, Mary-Ann Constantine, @damianwalforddavies, Caradoc Evans, Dorothy K. Haynes, @lucie_mckhardy Arthur Machen, Elinor Mordaunt, John Llewellyn Probert, L.T.C. Rolt, @priyasharma1000, Edward Thomas, Elizabeth Walter and D.P. Watt
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@inpressbooks @books.wales #WelshGothic #SerenBooks #NationalYearOfReading2026 #SpookySeason #AutumnBooks

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This September, you’re invited to explore the unseen and the unsettling. From dark and menacing landscapes to the everyday terrors of domestic settings disturbingly close to home, these stories will horrify and delight in equal measure. Be prepared, for ‘this is a land of ancient power, and even more ancient beings...’ Pre-order the latest addition to our Welsh Gothic series, ‘Giving the Darkness Life’ on our website now.
.
Stories by @markblayney1, Mary-Ann Constantine, @damianwalforddavies, Caradoc Evans, Dorothy K. Haynes, @lucie_mckhardy Arthur Machen, Elinor Mordaunt, John Llewellyn Probert, L.T.C. Rolt, @priyasharma1000, Edward Thomas, Elizabeth Walter and D.P. Watt
.
@inpressbooks @books.wales #WelshGothic #SerenBooks #NationalYearOfReading2026 #SpookySeason #AutumnBooks

We had a wonderful time listening to @megan.c.hayes talking about her memoir ‘Glimmering’ with Kath Little from @bardic_books at St Illtud’s church in Llantwit Major on Saturday. Diolch yn fawr to everyone who joined us and to Kath for hosting! Copies of ‘Glimmering’ are available now in your local bookshop.
.
#Glimmering #Memoir #SerenBooks #IndependentBookshop #NationalYearOfReading2026

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We had a wonderful time listening to @megan.c.hayes talking about her memoir ‘Glimmering’ with Kath Little from @bardic_books at St Illtud’s church in Llantwit Major on Saturday. Diolch yn fawr to everyone who joined us and to Kath for hosting! Copies of ‘Glimmering’ are available now in your local bookshop.
.
#Glimmering #Memoir #SerenBooks #IndependentBookshop #NationalYearOfReading2026

Ebooks available now! ‘In Search of Sea Dragons’, ‘Muslim Wales’ and ‘The Waters That Raised Us’ are now available from all major ebook retailers meaning you can take them with you on the go 🎉 Do you prefer reading ebooks, print books or both?
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@severn.sea.fossils @azimwales @tayloredmonds #Ebooks #Kindle #SerenBooks #BooksFromWales #LoveReading

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Ebooks available now! ‘In Search of Sea Dragons’, ‘Muslim Wales’ and ‘The Waters That Raised Us’ are now available from all major ebook retailers meaning you can take them with you on the go 🎉 Do you prefer reading ebooks, print books or both?
.
@severn.sea.fossils @azimwales @tayloredmonds #Ebooks #Kindle #SerenBooks #BooksFromWales #LoveReading

🏆@maggiepoet continues her winning streak having won the Guyana Prize for Literature Poetry Award with her collection ‘I Sing to the Greenhearts’! Available now in bookshops nationwide and on our website!
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#AwardWinning #GuyanaPrize #Poetry #PoetryBooks #SerenBooks

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🏆@maggiepoet continues her winning streak having won the Guyana Prize for Literature Poetry Award with her collection ‘I Sing to the Greenhearts’! Available now in bookshops nationwide and on our website!
.
#AwardWinning #GuyanaPrize #Poetry #PoetryBooks #SerenBooks

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