Enter our giveaway to win a copy of Heat Signature, the new collection of poetry from prize-winning Irish poet Siobhán Campbell.
To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st April:https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup
 
About Heat Signature:There is a beautiful ruthlessness to the poetry of Siobhán Campbell. Her new collection, Heat Signature, is composed in her characteristically spikey voice: infused with an intelligence that resists easy answers to the conundrums that have faced her Irish homeland, but also suffused with a grudging admiration for the citizens who have survived their tumultuous history. Likewise her ‘nature’ poems observe a natural world either compromised by human interference, or on the brink where nature is about to take its revenge. While these are poems of moral tension, of provocation, they also artful: full of marvellously terse textures, of clashing consonants, subtle rhymes and insistent rhythms. The blend of dark comedy, tragedy and politics is entirely typical of Campbell’s complex, thoughtful and profoundly entertaining poetry.
 
The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random from all our email subscribers on 1st May 2017, so make sure you sign up to Seren News before this deadline to be in with a chance of winning.
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Poet Nerys Williams, whose collection Sound Archive (Seren, 2011) won the Irish ‘Strong’ first volume prize (2012) and was nominated for a Forward first volume prize, has been announced as the writer who will undertake a literary residency in Brussels this May.
The residency forms part of Barddoniaeth Colled | Poetry of Loss, a wider project commemorating the First World War. The project is delivered by Literature Wales in partnership with the Welsh Government’s Cymru’n Cofio Wales Remembers 1914-1918 First World War Centenary Programme and the Government of Flanders.
Describing her vision for the residency, Nerys said: “My focus during the residency is to complete a long poem ‘Pontio’ (Bridging) that centres on an imagined meeting between Welsh poet Hedd Wyn and Irish poet Francis Ledwidge. Both died at Pilckem Ridge on 31st July 1917. The complexity of their situations– one as Welsh speaking conscript and the other opting to fight for Britain at a time when Ireland was seeking independence – prompts relevant questions regarding: nationalism, Europeanism, linguistic inventiveness, as well as the challenge of modernity upon traditional verse forms. The poem asks whether a culture of militarism has grown in post devolutionary Wales and how do I, as a female, bilingual, non-combatant poet, engage with a history of warfare? It will also enable me to dedicate time to writing two proposed radio projects and visit the area surrounding Artillery Wood, where both Hedd Wyn and Francis Ledwidge are buried.”
 
 
 
 

Literature Wales has just announced the names of twenty-one writers who will receive a total of £70,000 in Writers’ Bursaries this year, and among the list are Seren writers Paul Henry and Meirion Jordan. As well as supporting new and unpublished writers, the bursaries are designed to help established authors ‘experiment and create innovative new work’.
Meirion Jordan will be turning from poetry to work on his first novel, which is set in Wales and France in the aftermath of Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion. From Paul Henry we will see an exploration of the borders between music and silence.
See the full list of successful authors, and their forthcoming projects, on the Literature Wales website.