Simon appleby, Author at Seren

Posted on June 12, 2017 by Simon appleby

Win a copy of Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After The Beatles

Enter our giveaway to win a copy of Newspaper Taxis, an anthology of poems inspired by The Beatles.
To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st July:https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

About Newspaper Taxis:In January 1963 the single ‘Please, Please Me’ shot to number one, heralding the start of both Beatlemania and the swinging sixties. In the next few years The Beatles wrote the template for pop music. Their songs defined popular culture at a time when it was inspiring social change in Europe and North America, and this book collects poems that both respond to the music and to their influence on the way we lived then and the way we live now.With contributions by a myriad of poets, young and old, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Adrian Henri, Philip Larkin, Lachlan Mackinnon, Roger McGough, Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Reed and Carol Rumens, this book is a response to The Beatles’ creativity and capacity to influence successive generations.
(All royalties from the sale of this book are being donated to Claire House Children’s Hospice)

The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random from all our email subscribers on 1st July 2017, so make sure you sign up to Seren News before this deadline to be in with a chance of winning.
Feeling generous? Why not invite your friends to enter, by signing up using the link below:http://serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

Posted on June 2, 2017 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Relic’, Katherine Stansfield

To mark the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1st 1967, our Friday Poem this week is taken from Newspaper Taxis: Poems After The Beatles.

Newspaper Taxis collects together poems that showcase the vast and varied influence The Beatles had on the way we lived then and the way we live now. With contributions by myriad of poets, young and old, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Adrian Henri, Philip Larkin, Lachlan Mackinnon, Roger McGough, Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Reed, Carol Rumens and Katherine Stansfield (featured here), this book is a response to the Beatles’ creativity and capacity to influence successive generations.
‘Relic’ by Katherine Stansfield imagines what the buyer of one of John Lennon’s teeth, auctioned in November 2011, might do with it. The poem blends together the whimsical and the macabre – ‘After fifty years it looks / like forgotten popcorn’. With humour, and wistfulness, the poet brings back the ‘long dead croon’ to play again in all our ears.

Newspaper Taxis is available from our website: £9.99

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Posted on May 26, 2017 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Song for the Unburied’, Carol Rumens

Carol Rumens Song for the Unburied Friday Poem

Our thoughts are with Manchester, and we don’t have words to express our sorrow. In tribute we feature Carol Rumens’ ‘Song for the Unburied’ as this week’s Friday Poem.

‘Song for the Unburied’ is taken from Carol Rumens’ 2008 collection Blind Spots, a masterclass of inventive, intelligent, original, and relevant modern poetry. A major voice in contemporary verse, Rumens is admired as much for her technical brilliance as for the range, breadth and subtlety of her subject matter. You might find a sonnet, a sestina, a villanelle but you’ll also chance across a pantoum or a ghazal, or a fluid free verse poem where birdsong flickers off the edges of the page. Most uncommonly, these poems are informed by a consciousness that is as fiercely personal and tender as it is public-minded and political.

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Posted on May 19, 2017 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Branwen’s starling’, Meirion Jordan

Meirion Jordan Branwen's starling Friday Poem

Lady Charlotte Guest, the first to publish a full collection of the Mabinogion legends in translation, was born on this day in 1812. In celebration, our Friday Poem is ‘Branwen’s starling’ from Meiron Jordan’s Mabinogion-inspired collection, Regeneration.

Regeneration is Welsh poet Meirion Jordan’s take on the medieval manuscripts known today as Llyfr Coch Hergest and Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch). This collection is a re-imagining, inspired by source material that includes the stories of the Mabinogion, and Malory’s version of King Arthur’s tales.
In ‘Red Book’ we meet characters drawn from the eleven stories of the Mabinogi, like ‘Arawn, lord of Annwn’; ‘Rhiannon’s gossips’ and ‘Blodauwedd (the woman made of flowers)’. These poems evoke what Meirion Jordan calls in his insightful preface ‘half-recalled heroic landscapes’; they capture the elusive essence of these characters, their mysterious passions and their sometimes violent and often strange adventures in Jordan’s distinctive poetic style. His pared-down pure lyricism and tightly enjambed free-verse lines bring brevity and clarity to these tales without subtracting their unsettling power to move us.

In the Mabinogion story of Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr, the princess is married to Matholwch, King of Ireland. Enraged that he has not been consulted about the match, Branwen’s half-brother Efnysien mutilates the groom-to-be’s horses and Matholwch leaves with his bride, still bitter, but pacified by the gift of a magic couldron which can bring the dead back to life. Branwen endures much abuse after she arrives in Ireland and so tames a starling to fly to her brother Brân, King of Wales, so she may be saved. After a period of war and great devastation, Branwen is returned to Wales, and dies grieving over the destruction caused on her account.

Regeneration by Merion Jordan is available on our website: £8.99
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Posted on May 18, 2017 by Simon appleby

Two Seren authors among the Learned Society of Wales’ 44 New Fellows

In the 2017 election of new Fellows to the Learned Society of Wales, two Seren writers are among the 44 to have been elected: Jasmine Donahaye and Christopher Meredith.
Election to Fellowship is a public recognition of academic excellence, and LSW Fellowship is keenly competed. Fellows are elected following a rigorous examination of their achievements in their relevant fields. This election further strengthened the Society’s Fellowship by adding 44 new Fellows to its ranks, including two new Honorary Fellows, the former President of Ireland Professor Mary McAleese and Lord Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood. The Society now has more than 460 Fellows, distinguished men and women from all branches of learning who are prominent figures within their respective academic disciplines or professions.
Dr Jasmine Donahaye is among the new Fellows working in Welsh culture. Her memoir Losing Israel was the 2016 winner of the Wales Book of the Year Open University in Wales Creative Non-Fiction Award. She has eight years working in Welsh publishing, including two years as editor of Planet, and is Associate Professor at Swansea University.
Christopher Meredith joins the Fellows working in Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences. He is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, University of South Wales. He is an award-winning author of four novels and three collections of poetry and also tranlsates Welsh to English. Prizes include an Eric Gregory Award, the Arts Council of Wales Young Writer Prize and the Fiction Prize. His most recent novel is The Book of Idiots (2012).

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Simon appleby

Book giveaway: win a copy of Mr Vogel by Lloyd Jones

This month we are giving away a copy of Lloyd Jones’ stunning novel, Mr Vogel, which is newly back in print.

To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st June:
https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

About Mr Vogel:
Following a bout of alcoholism which almost killed him, Lloyd Jones decided to recuperate by walking around Wales. It was this epic walk which inspired Jones to write Mr Vogel – one of the most original and engaging novels to appear from – and about – Wales in recent years.
The novel begins with the discovery, in the attic of a second-hand bookshop, of an account of a lame man’s mysterious quest – the so-called ’Vogel Papers’. Our guide, a Welshman, becomes obsessed with the Vogel Papers: his investigations take him across three continents and around his homeland – from Anglesey to Pembrokeshire, from Bangor to the Black Mountains – in search of a strange man known only as Mr Vogel.

We will pick a winner at random from all our email subscribers on 1st June. Make sure you have signed up to Seren News before then to be in with a chance of winning!

Why not give your friends a chance to win too, by recommending that they sign up to our newsletter before the end of the month using this link?
www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Simon appleby

Legend of the Month: Robert Graves

Each month we are celebrating one fantastic Seren author in honour of Wales’ Year of Legends. This month the spotlight falls on Robert Graves.

Robert Graves began publishing poetry after the outbreak of the First World War, for which he enlisted in 1914 as a junior officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was one of the first to write realistic poems about the experience of fighting on the frontline. His first volume, Over the Brazier, was published in 1916, and by 1917 he had produced two further collections of war poetry whilst still on active service. Over the Brazier and Fairies and Fusiliers earned for Graves the reputation of an accomplished war poet.
You can find all Graves’ war poetry in recently published Robert Graves: War Poems (Seren, 2016).

During his lifetime Graves published more than 140 books, including fifty-five collections of poetry (he reworked his Collected Poems repeatedly during his career), fifteen novels, ten translations, and forty works of non-fiction, autobiography, and literary essays. His best known works are his memoir of World War One, Goodbye to All That, The White Goddess, and the novels I, Claudius and Claudius the Great.

Here is Graves’ poem, ‘Hate Not, Fear Not’, from his previously unpublished collection The Patchwork Flag (1918) which, almost a century after composition, has now been brought into print as part of Robert Graves: War Poems.

Robert Graves Hate Not, Fear Not

Robert Graves: War Poems is available from our website: £19.99

Find a great selection of books by our other legendary writers on the Year of Legends page.

And don’t forget to sign up to our free, no-purchase-necessary Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us.

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Posted on May 14, 2017 by Simon appleby

Happy Dylan Thomas Day

Today is Dylan Day – an international day celebrating the life and work of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, held on 14 May each year to mark the date Under Milk Wood was first read on stage at 92Y The Poetry Center, New York in 1953.

Why not celebrate Dylan Day with one of our Dylan Thomas related titles – 50% off for today only.

Find out more about Dylan Thomas through Dylan Remembered: Volume One: 1914-1934 and Dylan Remembered: Volume Two: 1914-1934, which collect together transcribed interviews about the poet. Journalist, broadcaster, and author Colin Edwards interviewed numerous sources close to Thomas for a planned biography of the poet, but he was unable to begin work before his early death. The transcribed tapes disclose startling new information about Thomas’s life and writing, including influences on his writing and the sources from which he drew inspiration and storylines.

Read David N. Thomas’ Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas, which draws on the author’s extensive research, and uncovers startling new evidence, to produce the definitive answers in a superbly written account which balances historical context with forensic detail, Thomas’ character with the demands made upon him by friends, lovers and his reading public.

For something more lighthearted, enjoy Gwyneth Lewis’ novella, Advantages of the Older Man, in which a Swansea woman believes she is possessed by the spirit of Dylan Thomas. Naturally all is not as it seems. The woman, who works in the Dylan Thomas Centre, meets a rather different Dylan from the one she knows by repute, one who doesn’t really fit in with the ghosts of other poets in heaven and is desperate to train himself to join the fitter shades of the long distance runners instead. Her own life, which has been lonely and sad, is completely transformed by the encounter.

All books mentioned above are 50% off until midnight tonight.

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Selfridges’, Tamar Yoseloff

This week our Friday Poem is ‘Selfridges’, the opening number from Tamar Yoseloff’s A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems.

First published in Sweetheart (Slow Dancer Press, 1998), ‘Selfridges’ portrays an intermingling of awe and repulsion as the speaker, in her youth, stumbles upon the meat counter whilst shopping with her mother.
A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems encompasses selections from four of Yoseloff’s published print volumes: Sweetheart, Barnard’s Star, Fetch and The City with Horns; and poems from her collaborations with artists: Formerly, Marks and Desire Paths, as well as a generous selection of beautiful new poems.

Selfridges

My mother held a wire basket in one hand,
my hand in the other. Occasionally she’d pause
to cross an item from her list as she plucked it
from the shelf. For a brief moment she released
her grip and I must have wandered off,
realised I was lost near the butcher’s counter.
The full odour of fresh meat, blood and sawdust
hit me suddenly; I looked up to see hares, headless,
strung from metal hooks. I don’t think I’d even seen
a hare alive. The butcher was hacking a flank into steaks,
the first cut opening the bright pink of the leg,
the second negotiating bone. But what stopped me
in my tracks was the offal, displayed lovingly on a bed
of lettuce and ice – lambs’ kidneys, calves’ livers,
sweetbreads, hearts – all the vitals without function.
Just then I felt my mother yank me by the wrist;
she must have scolded me for drifting away
in a strange store, a foreign country, I can’t recall.
Twenty-five years later I can still see
those visceral hunks, served up like a delicacy,
indelicate, hearty, more real laid out there
than anything that beat inside me.

A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems is available from the Seren website: £12.99
Join our free, no-purchase-necessary Book Club for a 20% discount every time you shop with us

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Almost but not quite there’, Rebecca Perry

Our Friday poem this week is ‘Almost but not quite there’ from little armoured by Rebecca Perry.

‘Almost but not quite there’ is an insightful and nostalgic poem which captures an early childhood memory of ‘running away’. The poem is a touching remembrance of a father’s patient teachings, and uses quietly intense imagery to describe, through a child’s eyes, the slow passing of time.
little armoured won the Poetry Wales Purple Moose Poetry Prize in 2011 and throughout the collection, Rebecca Parry’s dynamic and distinctive voice creates ‘exact and tender, smart and moving poems.’ (John McAuliffe)

Almost but not quite there

Running away never amounted to much.
My stuttering feet would not walk
farther than the third lamppost down,
chinking a lunchbox full of china gnomes
chipped from the last time.

My father would take me by the hand
and say, as he inched me nearer home,
sticking your head in the sand
does no one any good,
and where would we be
if we all behaved like ostriches?

Back then everything was as slow
as the setting of ice cubes, slow as the spins
of bakelite telephones,
slow as the sinking of a one-winged wasp in
a paddling pool,

slow as my father’s voice singing
a half remembered song about Lahore,
slow as the death of his mate Eddie
who used to drum for Status Quo,
whose handiwork still runs wires
through our house;

slow as the sinking in of his words,
like syrup pressing down into porridge,
after we got tear gassed in Tesco,
that you always need an arm free, an eye open,
a foot to the floor
and darling, remember this,
a tooth you could easily be without.

little armoured is available from the Seren website: £5.00
Join our free, no-purchase-necessary Book Club for a 20% discount every time you shop with us

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