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Friday Poem – ‘You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest’ by Rhiannon Hooson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest’ by Rhiannon Hooson from her latest collection Goliat.

This cover shows a ghost-like figure wrapped in a sheet standing in a field at dusk. The text reads: Goliat Rhiannon Hooson

Goliat is the second collection by Rhiannon Hooson, a follow-up to her Wales Book of the Year shortlisted debut, The Other City. An intelligent and beautiful book, Goliat offers absorbing stories of a precarious world on the brink of climate emergency. Employing startling imagery and a deep sense of history, these poems explore the irreplaceable beauty of a wild world, and the terrible damage that humans might do to each other and the earth.

You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest It is a gentle, haunted world. Circumstance has thrown it far into the future, but there are things in it you and I would understand: the way silence settles across a wet morning and the roe deer raise their heads. Perhaps, also, a sense of things that need not find their equilibrium. Our sighs are vapours: no myth exists to hold us like a heart in aspic. Again and again the sun sets, swings under the earth’s belly, lifts a worn edge of cloud come morning. Perhaps we grieve for language, realising our fluency was false. Words are a closed loop. A tight knot. The roe deer raise their heads, move between the trees, listening for wolves. Pale moths and the moon’s white light. Where once we walked, water rises. You and I are ghosts in the future’s forest.

Goliat is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Candlemas’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Candlemas’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from her new and selected poems The Little Hours.

This cover shows an illustration of a pagan calendar depicting the seasons. The text reads: The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems. Hilary Llewellyn-Williams.

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems is a landmark volume which collects key poems from the career of Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, one of the outstanding poets of her generation in Wales. In addition to the classic sequences ‘The Tree Calendar’ and ‘Book of Shadows’, the book also includes ‘The Little Hours’, a sequence of new work arranged according to the traditional monastic hours. Llewellyn-Williams is one of the earliest environmental poets; her response to nature always profound, passionate and keenly observed. The Little Hours will remind readers of her many strengths and beauties and shows new readers the breadth and talent of a writer whose eye for vivid imagery and startling detail has always astounded.

Candlemas for my father, d. 2/2/81 On Brigid’s Night there was rain and wind and miles of darkness between us; there was a generation of pain between us, but I stayed awake for love’s sake, and because of the candles. On Brigid’s Night spring was calling a long way off, below the horizon invisible, but heard, like a changed note; my ears attuned, I lit candles around the room. My children slept upstairs, bundles of summer. I was tight-strung and humming. Nineteen points of fire in a small room needed watching: I sat with them. My eyes half-closed I watched them burn all night, watched wax spill pools and curl and flow, the flames dip low, wrapped round in shadows, caught in the eye of light. The night you died I talked to you through webs of sleep, recalling you in my years of childhood solid and sure, filling the fiery spaces. I slept at last towards dawn, in a darkened room. Slowly I woke to sunlight striping the carpet, the cold little heaps of wax: and my children shouting, and spring one day nearer and bottles clanking outside, and a sense of peace and freedom; then the shrill cry of the telephone, which I stumbled up to answer.

The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems is available on the Seren website: £12.99

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Watch Hilary reading her poem ‘Considering the World’ on our Youtube channel:

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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

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

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:

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Friday Poem – ‘Flamingo’ by Kathryn Bevis

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Flamingo’ by Kathryn Bevis from her pamphlet of the same name. If you missed the online launch for Flamingo, you can watch it back now on our Youtube channel.

This cover shows a surreal still life painting of four flamingos poking their heads out of a blue and white patterned vase. The text reads: Flamingo, Kathryn Bevis.

Kathryn Bevis’s critically-acclaimed debut pamphlet Flamingo introduces us to a troupe of wild, unique, and captivating poems. Life and our own embodiment are brought sharply into focus as we encounter a variety of subjects including work, survival, love, and mortality. Formally inventive, these hopeful and sometimes surreal poems are not afraid to confront complex or difficult emotions. Cancer is posed as a ring-tailed lemur, capering through the sufferer’s body, and the title poem imagines death as a flamboyant transformation where the speaker shapeshifts into the afterlife. Each poem is a discovery and a joy.

Flamingo My love, when I die, I’ll turn flamingo: fall asleep, face tucked in on the pillow of myself. Even as you cry, I’ll be stepping from the bed, feeling plush, pink tulle tutuing from my hips. My legs will telescope, grow thin and rosy. I’ll sense my feet web, feel a new itch to stamp and stir, to suck up larvae from the bottom of the lagoon. In this afterworld, some days I’ll fix one foot in mud, find infinite repose: the poise of a yogi in prayer. Others, I’ll gorge myself, filter feed on brine shrimp from the salty shadows. The other birds and I will grunt and growl over the choicest cuts like church women bickering over rosettes for jam at a country show. My love, do you know that the dead all flock together? We meet at the saline lake, dance our shuffle-legged shimmy, flick our heads like tango partners, flag and flap our scarlet scalloped wings, heads bopping, nodding to the beat. Do you see? After the illness, after the grief, the pain — as you will do, sweetheart — the dead must learn to love again.

Flamingo is available on the Seren website for £6.00

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Watch the recording of the online launch for Flamingo back on our Youtube channel now. Kathryn is joined by guest readers Vicky Morris and Jonathan Edwards.

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Friday Poem – ‘Hide and Seek’ by Hannah Hodgson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Hide and Seek’ by Hannah Hodgson from her debut collection 163 Days which was recently longlisted for the Barbellion Prize.

This cover shows a photo of artist Sue Austin floating underwater in her wheelchair over a bed of yellow coral. The text reads: 163 Days. Hannah Hodgson.

In her debut collection 163 Days Hannah Hodgson uses a panoply of medical, legal, and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness. In her long poem ‘163 Days’, her longest period of hospitalisation to date, she probes various truths which clash like a tray of dropped instruments in a silent operating theatre. The mundanity of hospital life is marbled by a changing landscape of mood, hope and loss. A gap yawns between the person she is, and the person in her medical notes. In ‘Aftercare’, Hannah navigates the worlds of both nightclubs and hospice care as she embarks on a new version of her life as a disabled adult. An important collection, in which Hodgson’s true voice takes poetry into difficult places.

Hide and Seek My mother learns I’m in trouble when a nurse says Resus like it rhymes with Dr Seuss. Re-seuss. He turns the monitor away from me. My body writing a tell-all-book, the hospital needs to protect me from. I can feel my heart blinking on that screen, flickering as my cursor. The machine keeps alerting the staff towards my apparent death. I’m too shallow to be captured. The doctor spends fifteen minutes trying to get a cannular into one of the branches inside my arm. How many times does a blood pressure cuff need to confirm my consciousness? How many times do I need to tell my mother which of my documents to burn?

163 Days is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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