Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 76
ISBN: 9781781725832
Publication date: June 1, 2020
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 76
ISBN: 9781781725849
Publication date: June 1, 2020
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
“Fast-talking, wise-cracking and worldly wise” – Zoë Brigley
The Estate Agent’s Daughter is Rhian Edwards’ eagerly awaited follow-up to her multi-prizewinning debut Clueless Dogs. Her voice is both powerfully personal, local to her Bridgend birthplace, and performative, born to be read aloud. In the title poem, the protagonist has become a surrealist house, with dream-like details ‘carpeted with sycamore seeds and cherry blossom throughout’; the sturdy realism of a writing desk ‘nudged/ to the brink of the bay’, as well as points of sharp irony: ‘all mod cons’. This poem foreshadows both the heartbreak (a shattered first marriage) and joy (the birth of a daughter), that feature in the work that follows. We also have pieces of sly irony, of disillusioned dating. There is an engaging diptych devoted to a recently deceased grandmother and grandfather, who died within months of each other, whose vivid personalities with all their tragi-comic elements, shine through. The author combines her visceral skill for description, for these are poems based in the body, with a feminist forthright courage to speak of difficult things.
Rhian Edwards
Rhian is a multi-award winning poet. Her first collection of poems Clueless Dogs (Seren) won Wales Book of the Year 2013, the Roland Mathias Prize for Poetry 2013 and Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice 2013. It was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2012.
Her pamphlet of poems, Parade the Fib (Tall-Lighthouse), was awarded the Poetry Book Society Choice for autumn 2008 and her most recent pamphlet Brood (Seren) 2017, was illustrated by Paul Edwards.
Rhian is also a winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, having won both the Judges and Audience award. She was also the first Writer in Residence at Aberystwyth Arts Centre from March to June 2013.
Rhian’s poems have appeared in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, New Statesman, Spectator, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Arete, Prague Revue, the London Magazine, Stand and Planet Magazine amongst others.
Rhian is a poet and musician and has delivered over 400 stage, radio and festival performances world-wide. She lives in South Wales with her daughter.
Her eagerly awaited second collection The Estate Agent’s Daughter was a National Poetry Day Recommended Read in 2020.
“To her credit, Edwards tackles difficult, often painful, subjects unflinchingly. She tells it how it is without seeking our sympathy. She challenges the conventional and does so in a way that is by turn full of humour but also loss.”
Neil Leadbeater
“Opening her collection with the title poem, Rhian Edwards immediately sets the tone: wryly humorous, unabashed, yet slightly self-depreciating … I feel I’ve soaked up versions of these confessions through conversations with close friends, yet here they are rendered with a skill that makes each reflection gleam. Edwards is a poet unafraid of casting her sharp gaze and semantic wizardry on herself. It’s no wonder that we can’t help wanting to spend more time in the warmth of her sunlight.”
Judy Darley, SkyLightRain
“After the ebullience of her first collection, Rhian Edwards has written a second filled with motherhood, money and difficult relationships. This is certainly a volume in which the poet shows she has grown up. The tones are darker, the moods more worldly. I’d say The Estate Agent’s Daughter is a necessary reading experience for anyone embarking, or trying to survive, their fortieth decade.”
Robert Minhinnick
“The Estate Agent’s Daughter is fast-talking, wise-cracking and worldly wise with the particular knowledge of women, while the range of poems is impressive from the downright hilarious to poignant poems about loss. The speakers in these poems are not satisfied by an unlived life, and they show us too how women can be imprisoned by the domestic, by marriage, or conventional ideas of happiness. Yet the women do break out, like ‘Blodeuwedd’ who tries to “uproot the stones of this prison,” and Edwards shows that women can subvert allotted roles, for example by being mothers and lovers. Both funny and endearing, The Estate Agent’s Daughter measures up beautifully.”
Zoë Brigley
“Brilliant, visceral poems. Reading them feels like being led through beautiful rooms by an estate agent who always takes care to show you what’s hidden beneath the floorboards.”
Joe Dunthorne
Watch Rhian reading her poem ‘Counting Boards’ from The Estate Agent’s Daughter
