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Celebrating International Women’s Day 2023

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2023, we’re highlighting a range of titles which explore various thoughts and experiences affecting women’s lives today. Find many more fantastic books written by women on our website.

Are You Judging Me Yet? by Kim Moore

This cover shows a sculpture of a glass dress as if worn by an invisible figure. It is posed as if sat on its left hip with its legs stretched out to the side. The text reads: Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism. Kim Moore.

This collection of lyric essays by Forward prize-winning poet Kim Moore explores at the relationship between poetry and everyday sexism. Moore examines the dynamics of performing poetry as a female poet – drawing on her PhD research and experiences of writing and performing the poems in her second collection All The Men I Never Married which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2022. 

The essays tackle subjects that range from heckling at poetry readings, problems with the male gaze and explorations of what the female gaze might look like in poetry to discussions about complicity, guilt and objectification, the slipperiness of the word sexism and whether poetry can be part of transformational change.  

Buy now £9.99

Listen to Kim chatting about the book on today’s episode of BBC Woman’s Hour.

Women’s Work Ed. Eva Salzman and Amy Wack

This cover shows an abstract painting of a child looking over the edge of a table with a blue coffee jug about to topple over on the top. The text reads: Women's Work. Modern Women Poets Writing in English. Edited by Eva Salzman and Amy Wack.

With over 250 contributors, this generous selection of poetry by women features poets from the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand. Arranged by thematic chapters that touch on various aspects of modern life, this anthology aims to be a touchstone of women’s thoughts and experiences; to be entertaining and relevant as well as inclusive and representative of some of the best poetry published now.

In these ‘Post-Feminist’ times, is there a need for such a book? Is the literary establishment still as dominated by men as it once was? Who gets to decide the canon? Eva Salzman opens Women’s Work with a lively polemic, making the case for the women-only anthology with characteristic wit and flair.

Buy now £14.99

Writing on Water by Maggie Harris

This cover shows a colourful illustration of a woman with red skin and hair filled with bright tropical fish. The text reads: Writing on Water. Maggie Harris.

Maggie Harris’ short story collection Writing on Water is informed by the Caribbean, where she was born, and Britain where she has lived as an adult, and through them, the wider world. Issues of belonging and migration feature, but alongside these are growing interests in voice, narrative, gardening and botany, music and family. There are both UK and Caribbean voices in these tales, told by children, migrants, mothers, and grandparents.

Buy now £9.99

Republic by Nerys Williams

This cover shows a colourful print of a woman dressed in a black hoodie with large bunny ears on the hood. She has dripping dark blue rings around her eyes and stands out against an acid yellow background. The text reads: Republic. Nerys Williams.

Republic is about class, culture and community. It recounts the story of a young woman growing in west Wales up listening to the post-punk music of the 1980s and indie labels of the 1990s, decades which culminated in the explosion of “Cŵl Cymru” and new devolutionary powers in Wales.

Offering stories that are overheard, handed down, magnified, often translated from Welsh, this sequence of 80 prose poems creates a patchwork of narratives which share the challenges faced by women, Welsh-speakers, and other marginalised groups. This volume arose from the need to tell an alternative social history, one that commits an oral history to paper.

Buy now £9.99

The Amazingly Astonishing Story by Lucy Gannon

This cover shows a black and white cutout image of a young Lucy Gannon standing in a white dress with her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. The background of the cover is bright pink and the text reads: The Amazingly Astonishing Story. Lucy Gannon.

Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2021

Vividly told, The Amazingly Astonishing Story is a classic story of a working-class girl growing up in the fifties and sixties, where dreams and reality seem irreconcilable. Her Catholic upbringing, a father torn between his daughter and his new wife, her irreverent imagination and stubborn determination to enjoy life, all mean that Lucy Gannon really does have an amazing story (including meeting the Beatles in her school grounds) as she finds her place in the world.

Lucy Gannon is the author of 8 plays and 18 TV dramas or series, including The Best of Men, Soldier Soldier, Peak Practice, Bramwell, and Dad. She won the Richard Burton Award for New Playwrights and has been writer in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Buy now £12.99

This Is Not Who We Are by Sophie Buchaillard

This cover shows an image of an African tree silhouetted against the purple, mist shrouded dawn sky. The text reads: This Is Not Who We Are. Sophie Buchaillard.

1994, Iris and Victoria are pen friends. Iris writes about her life with her family in Paris. Victoria is in a refugee camp in Goma having fled the genocide in Rwanda in which thousands are being killed. One day Victoria’s letters stop, and Iris is told she has been moved.

Twenty years later Iris, a new mother, is working as a journalist in London. As she prepares to return to work, her thoughts turn to Victoria and what might have happened to her. She pitches a story to her editor which sets her on a journey to find her pen friend. But as she follows the story, things emerge that make her question her own past. Was her father, a French government official, somehow involved in the genocide? Are her childhood memories more fiction than fact?

How have the lives of these two women, who shared a moment in time, changed in the past twenty years? As the pressure of long-kept family secrets builds, will they ever find each other? 

Buy now £9.99

All The Men I Never Married by Kim Moore

This cover shows a collage of a man made up of tiny images of nature. Butterflies fly out from the figure in all directions, a stark contrast to the black background. The text reads: All The Men I Never Married, Kim Moore. Winner of the Forward Prize.

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2022

Kim Moore’s award-winning second collection All The Men I Never Married is pointedly feminist, challenging and keenly aware of the contradictions and complexities of desire. The 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love. A powerful collection of deeply thoughtful and deeply felt poetry.

Buy now £9.99

A City Burning by Angela Graham

This cover shows a photograph of a fiery orange and black sunset above a city reflected in the windscreen of a car. The text reads: A City Burning. Angela Graham.

Longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2021

A city burns in a crisis − because the status quo has collapsed and change must come. Every value, relationship and belief is shaken and the future is uncertain.

In the twenty-six stories in A City Burning, set in Wales, Northern Ireland and Italy, children and adults face, in the flames of personal tragedy, moments of potential transformation. On the threshold of their futures each must make a choice: how to live in this new ‘now’. With a virtuoso control of tone, by turns elegiac, comic, lyrical, philosophical, A City Burning examines power of all types, exploring conflicts between political allegiances; between autonomy and intimacy; emotional display and concealment; resistance versus acceptance. The result is a deeply human book full of hauntingly memorable characters and narratives.

Buy now £9.99

163 Days by Hannah Hodgson

This cover shows a photograph of artist Sue Austin floating underwater in her wheelchair above a bed of yellow coral. Her arms are thrown out and her long dark hair streams out behind her. The text reads: 163 Days. Hannah Hodgson.

Longlisted for the Barbellion Prize 2022

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.

Buy now £9.99

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9 Books for St. David’s Day

In celebration of St. David’s Day, here are 9 must-read books by Welsh authors.

Welsh Retrospective – Dannie Abse

Introduced and edited by Cary Archard, Welsh Retrospective collects poems from the across the career of renowned Welsh writer Dannie Abse. Well-loved poems such as ’Return to Cardiff’ and ’In the Theatre’, sit alongside many previously uncollected poems. Vivid character portraits of Aunt Alice and Cousin Sidney sit next to tributes to poet predecessors, Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins. Some poems draw on Jewish writings, others on Welsh language literature. This collection is a fascinating insight into Dannie Abse’s Wales and his versatility as a poet. His Wales was anything but parochial, his poems effortlessly universal. As we approach his centenary in 2023, readers of this collection will once again be struck by Abse’s gift for accepting mortality with wise optimism.

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Homelands – Eric Ngalle Charles

In Homelands, his debut collection, Eric Ngalle Charles draws on his early life raised by the matriarchs of Cameroon, being sent to Moscow by human traffickers, and finding a new home in Wales. Rich in tone, subject and emotion, Charles’ poetry moves between the present and the past, between Africa and Europe, and between despair and hope. It discovers that historical injustices now play out in new forms, and that family tensions are as strong as the love within a family. Despite the difficulties Charles has faced, Homelands contains poems of fondness, warmth and humour and, as he returns to Cameroon to confront old ghosts, forgiveness. 

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Miriam, Daniel and Me – Euron Griffith

When Miriam fell in love with Padraig life seemed simple. But soon she discovered that love is a treacherous business. Everything changed when she met Daniel. She was taken down an unexpected path which would dictate and dominate the rest of her life.

Spanning three generations of a North Wales family in a Welsh-speaking community, Miriam, Daniel and Me is an absorbing and compelling story of family discord, political turmoil, poetry, jealousy… and football.

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The Edge of Cymru – Julie Brominicks

The Edge of Cymru is the story of Julie Brominicks’ walk around Wales in the course of a year. As an educator she knew a lot about the country’s natural resources. But as a long established incomer from England and more recent Welsh learner, she wanted to know more about its history, about Wales today, and her place in it.

As her walk unwinds the history of Wales is also unwound, from the twenty-first century back to pre-human times, often viewed through an environmental lens. Brominicksʼ observations of the places and people she meets on her journey make a fascinating alternative travelogue about Wales and the lives its people live. Her writing is lyrical, with engaging and striking coinages and images which carry the reader along too, entertained and informed. A quest of personal discovery, the narrative of The Edge of Cymru is also a refreshingly different way of looking at place, identity, memory and belonging.

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A Last Respect – Ed. Glyn Mathias and Daniel G. Williams

A Last Respect celebrates the Roland Mathias Prize, awarded to outstanding poetry books by authors from Wales. It presents a selection of work from all eleven prize-winning books, by Dannie Abse, Tiffany Atkinson, Ruth Bidgood, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Christine Evans, John Freeman, Philip Gross, Gwyneth Lewis, Robert Minhinnick, and Owen Sheers. It is a who’s who of contemporary poetry which shows the form in good health in Wales.

The fifty-four poems included are wide-ranging in style and subject – relationships, nature, environmental issues, mortality, time, war, Wales, poetry itself, even the minefield of parents’ evenings. They are inventive, experimental, formal, original and, as prize-winners, of the highest quality.

This combination of prizewinning poems and informative commentary makes A Last Respect a must-have book of writing from Wales.

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Wild Places: Wales’ Top 40 Nature Sites – Iolo Williams

Wales is full of wildlife sites and in Wild Places television naturalist Iolo Williams picks his favourite forty from the many nature reserves scattered around the country. From Cemlyn on Anglesey to the Newport Wetlands, from Stackpole in Pembrokeshire to the Dee Estuary, Williams criss-crosses Wales. His list takes in coastal sites from marshes to towering cliffs – plus Skomer and other islands – mountains, valleys, bogs, meadows, woods and land reclaimed from industry. These wild places vary in size from the vastness of bog at Tregaron to the hidden gem that is the daffodil wood at Coed-y-Bwl. They include sites of international significance, like Skomer Island, and the managed beauty of the former open cast site, Parc Slip.

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The Green Bridge: Stories from Wales – John Davies

The short story has long been a popular form with writers and readers in Wales.  The Green Bridge collects work by 25 of the country’s foremost writers of the twentieth century in an entertaining and varied anthology. Horror, satire, humour, war, tales of the aristocracy, of navvies, love, and madness, industry the countryside, politics and sport: these stories provide insight into the changing values of Wales and the world. This is enjoyable reading for those who know Wales and its authors, and for newcomers to both.

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A City Burning – Angela Graham

A city burns in a crisis − because the status quo has collapsed and change must come. Every value, relationship and belief is shaken and the future is uncertain.

In the twenty-six stories in A City Burning, set in Wales, Northern Ireland and Italy, children and adults face, in the flames of personal tragedy, moments of potential transformation. On the threshold of their futures each must make a choice: how to live in this new ‘now’. Some of these moments occur in mundane circumstances, others amidst tragedy or drama. 

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Walking the Valleys – Peter Finch and John Briggs

 Over the past two centuries the South Wales Valleys have gone from idyllic rural landscape to the engine room of the British Empire to post industrial decline. Building on the success of their book Walking Cardiff, Peter Finch and John Briggs explore how the Valleys have changed, and how they are evolving for the twenty-first centuries in their new book Walking the Valleys. 

The informative texts can be used as both a route finder and a literary entertainment in themselves.  John Briggs’s lively photographs provide further detail and each walk is illustrated with a map. Armchair walkers will find the book as interesting and as useful as those actually pull on their boots. And natives and visitors alike will find a new discovery around every corner.

Buy now

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Guest Post: Listening to Republic – Nerys Williams

As we publish her new collection Republic, poet Nerys Williams gives us an insight into the music which accompanied its writing.

Listening to Republic

Writing Republic I found that post punk music of the 80s and 90s became key in an attempt to articulate a relationship between community, language and culture. Given the current preponderance of School Disco compilations, initially it might seem that retreating to the music of the 80s and 90s is another variant in communal nostalgia. This is not the intention of Republic. I believe that music carries an energy for future action and desire for change. What you learn over the years changes how you listen to those important early albums. Context shifts meaning.

This cover shows a colourful print of a woman dressed in a black hoodie with large bunny ears on the hood. She has dripping dark blue rings around her eyes and stands out against an acid yellow background. The text reads: Republic. Nerys Williams.

Republic is an anti-memoir, it came from a need to transcribe the voices of a community (as opposed to a single voice) and a refutation of the easy and often predictable epiphanies of some memoirs. Music has a voice throughout this volume. Music is not a soundtrack or sonic wallpaper. Some of the lyrics I cite are just as beloved to me as Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

The sounds in this discography list are eclectic – moving from SKA, 80s pop, Welsh language electronica and rave to 90s shoegazing, jazz samba and classical minimalism.

I grew up in a part of West Wales which in the early 80s had an ambivalent relationship to the Welsh language. Welsh bilingual education was still an experiment. The 11+ existed to partition kids. English language music culture was king. Crucially Welsh language post punk music gave me a love of language that no primer could ever do. 

In the late 1980s Fideo 9 on S4C, with is wonderful presenter Eddie Ladd, pushed boundaries. It was a relief to watch bands with strong female leads like Fiona Owen of Eirin Peryglus and Patricia Morgan from Datblygu performing in videos and asserting a space for non-rock female personas. Before the web, encountering such bands as Datblygy, Anhrefn, Y Cyrff on the TV and at gigs arranged by Cymdeithas yr. Iaith, felt like finding a community. An outsider Wales which was vibrant and questioning.

Logo for Fideo9

The range was broad: moving from the reggae dub of Llwybr Llaethog, the malleable beats of Pop Negatif Wastad and guitar riffs of The Crumblowers to Traddodiad Ofnus’s socialist love letters and Tŷ Gwydr’s dance utopianism. Welsh language music was part of a global community. Datblygu could be cued between Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares and The Sugarcubes.

Republic offers a full discography. A Spotify playlist accompanies the book giving a sense not only of the period, but also issues that remain. Elfyn Presli’s “Jackboots Maggie Thatcher” and  The Specials’ “Ghost Town” have not lost their resonance, or their relevance. There are some bands (especially Welsh bands from the listing above) whose work cannot be located on Spotify. Archive recordings exist on various web platforms (such as Ffarout’s YouTube channel). But I want to stress that Apple Music and Bandcamp offer ways of financially contributing to Welsh bands and labels through subscription downloads.

Writing this, on Welsh language music day 10th February 2023, I am grateful to those 1980s bands who were never able to get any sustainable income from their music, but did it anyhow. I thank those bands who loaded their vans and cars, went cross-country in the cold and rain to visit run down country hotels. I hug those band members who having travelled on B roads, played to drunken audiences. I acknowledge those experimentalists who often faced jeering or apathy. I salute the women who organised gigs and Cymdeithas cells tirelessly. I carry this archive of voices with me (with recent updates).

Nerys Williams

Full Discography (by section number)

8

Elfyn Presli ‘Jackboots Maggie Thatcher’ The First Cuts Are The Deepest (Words of Warning, 1987)

10

Grace Jones Island Life (Island, 1985)

Talking Heads ‘Psycho Killer’ Talking Heads: 77 (Sire, 1977)

11

David Bowie ‘I can’t give everything away’ Blackstar (Columbia, 2016)

12

Sex Pistols ‘God Save the Queen’ Never Mind the Bollocks: Here’s The Sex Pistols (Virgin, 1977)

The Cure ‘The Top’ The Top (Fiction, 1984)

13

my bloody valentine ‘only shallow’ loveless (Creation, 1991)

Joy Division ‘She’s Lost Control’ Unknown Pleasures (Factory, 1979)

15

Ludovicio Einaudi ‘Nuvole Blanche’  Una Mattina (Sony, 2004)

Ludovicio Einaudi ‘Fuori Dal Mondo’ Eden Roc (Sony, 1999)

19

Frank Sinatra ‘Theme from New York, New York’ Trilogy: Past Present Future (Reprise, 1980)

22

Beatles ‘Help!’ Help! (EMI, 1965)

Val Doonican Val Doonican Rocks but Gently (Pye, 1967)

23

Tom Jones ‘Delilah’ (Decca, 1968)

24

Monkees ‘The Last Train to Clarksville’ The Monkees (Colgems, 1966)

Primitives ‘Crash’ Lovely (RCA, 1988)

25

Sonic Youth ‘Tunic (Song for Karen)’ Goo (Geffen, 1990)

The Pixies ‘Bone Machine’ Surfer Rosa (4AD, 1987)

Cocteau Twins ‘Lorelei’ Treasure (4AD, 1984)

Bjork ‘Human Behaviour’ Debut (One Little Independent, 1993)

my bloody valentine ‘Cigarette in your Bed’ You Made Me Realise  (Creation, 1988)

26

The Wedding Present ‘A Million Miles’  George Best (Reception, 1987)

28

The Stone Roses ‘Elephant Stone’ (1988, Silvertone)

The Happy Mondays ‘Step On’ (1990, Factory)

34

Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians ‘Dry Bones’ (Decca, 1947)

35

The Sugarcubes ‘Deus’ Life’s Too Good (One Little Independent, 1988)

36

Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas (4AD, 1990)

39

Adam & the Ants ‘That Voodoo’ (CBS, 1981)

Adam & the Ants ‘Dog Eat Dog’ Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS, 1980)

The Specials ‘Ghost Town’ (2 Tone, 1981)

42

Stan Getz and João Gilberto Getz /Gilberto (Verve, 1964)

Bessie Smith ‘Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl’ (Columbia, 1931)

The Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks: Here’s The Sex Pistols (Virgin, 1977)

Datblygu ‘Cristion yn y Kibbutz’ Wyau (Anhrefn, 1988)

The Velvet Underground ‘The Gift’ White Light / White Heat (Verve, 1968)

Barbara Streisand ‘Send in the Clowns’ [from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Light Music] The Broadway Album (A&M, 1985)

43

David Bowie Low (RCA, 1977)

New Order ‘Vanishing Point’ Technique (Factory, 1989)

44

my bloody valentine ‘Instrumental no 2’ (Creation, 1988)

my bloody valentine Isn’t Anything (Creation, 1988)

my bloody valentine ‘Honey Power’ & ‘Moon Song’ Tremolo (Creation, 1991)

45

Adam & the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS,1980)

46

Soft Cell ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (Some Bizzare, 1981)

Duran Duran ‘Last Chance on the Stairway’ Rio (EMI, 1982)

47

Phil Oakey & Giorgio Moroder ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder (Virgin, 1984)

58

Lush ‘Sweetness and Light’ Gala (1990, 4AD)

Ride Going Blank Again (Creation, 1990)

Lush‘Nothing Natural’ Spooky (4AD, 1992)

Bob Dylan ‘Rainy Day Women #12 + 35’ Blonde on Blonde (Columbia, 1966)

62

Dyma’r Rysait [An Artists For Animals Compilation]:

Y Gwasgwyr ‘Ond Mae’r Dawns yn Mynd Ymlaen’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKzLvelr3Xk

Eirin Peryglus  ‘Cusanau’r Gwaed’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4by1lP_M6KA

Datblygu ‘Brechdanau Tywod’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grFxHUXOAsQ

Crisialau Plastig ‘Rigor Mortis’ (OFN, 1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqxTm24bbXc

Y Cyrff Dan y Cownter (Yn Fyw) (Y Cyrff, 1985) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKESvv-rybJ8y6gJ40MYyda5

Anhrefn Defaid Wellies a Skateboards (Workers Playtime, 1987) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKGhOZ5EL4A40nxGAoxOQUb0

Traddodiad Ofnus  Welsh Tourist Bored (Constrictor, 1987)

Ffa Coffi Pawb Dalec Peilon (Ankst, 1988) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKEj6Tgtq6MGHf-GUbFwjCIc

63

Datblygu ‘Bar Hwyr’ Trosglwyddo’r Gwirionedd (NEON 1983

Datblygu ‘Dafydd Iwan yn y Glaw’ Wyau (Anhrefn, 1988)

Public Image Ltd. Metal Box (Virgin, 1979)

The Fall Bend Sinister (Beggars Banquet, 1986)

The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy (Blanco y Negro, 1985)

Patti Smith Horses (Arista, 1975)

64

PJ Harvey ‘Send His Love to Me’ To Bring You My Love (Island, 1995)

67

Madness ‘Shut Up’ 7 (Stiff, 1981)

71

The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radiostar’ The Age of Plastic (Island, 1971)

Abba ‘SOS’ ABBA (Epic, 1975)

Elvis Presley ‘There’s a Brand New Day on the Horizon’ Roustabout (RCA, 1964)

The Cure ‘Plastic Passion’ Boys Don’t Cry (Fiction, 1980)

72

David Bowie ‘Ziggy Stardust’ The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (RCA Records, 1972)

The Fall ‘New Big Prinz’ I Am Kurious Oranj (Beggars Banquet, 1988)

73

Japan ‘Ghosts’ Tin Drum (Virgin,1981)

Joy Division ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (Factory,1980)

Depeche Mode ‘Somebody’ Some Great Reward (Mute, 1984)

Kylie Minogue ‘I Should be So Lucky’ (Mushroom, 1987)

76

PJ Harvey ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ Dry (Too Pure, 1992)

Patrick McGee & Honor Blackman ‘Kinky Boots’ (Decca, 1964) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI0v0GCFrjc

Crumblowers Llithro mewn i Ffantasi (Headstun, 1989)

Y Fflaps Amhersain (Probe Plus, 1988) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKFwISdsbaHyS1qZEsYeDcxx

The Slits Cut (Island, 1979)

Gadael yr Ugeinfed Ganrif [Compilation featuring bands Yr Anhrefn, Elfyn Presli, Datblygu, Traddodiad Ofnus, Igam Ogam] (Anhrefn, 1986) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf39b1XYQsKG4ofEn6ZPlbnLmmDSBhr0P

77

Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head (Parlaphone, 2002)

PJ Harvey Let England Shake (Island, 2011)

This cover shows a colourful print of a woman dressed in a black hoodie with large bunny ears on the hood. She has dripping dark blue rings around her eyes and stands out against an acid yellow background. The text reads: Republic. Nerys Williams.

In her explosive new poetry collection Republic Nerys Williams opens a window on life in rural west Wales during the 1980s and 90s. English and Welsh-language post-punk bands, politics, feminism and family life are thrown together on the page as she questions what makes a republic?

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Recipe: Pancakes with blueberry compote and coconut cream

To celebrate Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day, we’re sharing this delicious recipe for pancakes with blueberry compote and coconut cream from The Seasonal Vegan by Sarah Philpott.

If you’re looking for an in-season alternative to blueberries, why not serve with stewed apple, rhubarb, or frozen blackberries?

The Seasonal Vegan is a kitchen diary of seasonal recipes with a delicious mixture of Sarah Philpott’s fine food writing and Manon Houston’s beautiful photography. This guide to eating with the seasons takes a realistic approach to shopping cheaply and sustainably and proves that the vegan lifestyle is anything but expensive.

Pancakes with blueberry compote and coconut cream

Under 20 minutes | Makes 2 large pancakes

This photo shows a plate of large flat pancakes stacked up beside an inviting scoop of coconut cream and topped with blueberry compote.
Photograph by Manon Houston

Ingredients

– 160g chickpea/gram flour
– 1 ½ tsp baking powder
– 2 tbsp maple syrup
– 1 tsp cinnamon
– 200ml plant milk or water
– 2-3 tbsp oil
– Half a tin or packet of coconut cream

For the compote

– 200g fresh or frozen blueberries
– 45ml water
– 50g granulated sugar
–The juice of half a lemon
– 1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the dry ingredients together and gradually add the water or milk and the maple syrup and stir until it has a thick, but pourable, consistency. Heat the oil in a non-stick pan over a medium heat (test if it’s hot enough by dropping in a tiny bit of batter – it should sizzle) then pour in half the batter and cook, flipping over occasionally, for 3-4 minutes. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

To make the compote, combine the blueberries, water, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Cook over a medium heat for about 10-15 mins. Serve warm or cold.

Serve with the compote and coconut cream.

The Seasonal Vegan is available on the Seren website: £12.99

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Looking for something a little more heartwarming? Why not try Sarah’s recipe for Beetroot & Hazelnut Soup also from The Seasonal Vegan.

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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

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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 – ‘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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Friday Poem – ‘White Poem’ by SL Grange

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘White Poem’ by SL Grange from their pamphlet bodies and other haunted houses which won the inaugural Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. The Poetry Wales Wales Poetry Award is currently open for entries for single poems until the 12th January 2023.

This cover shows a black and white photo of the top of someones arm. they are pulling pack their t-shirt sleeve to reveal a ribbon tattoo which reads bodies and other haunted houses.

Speaking from and for LGBTQIA+ communities, SL Grange gives a voice to lost transcestors, celebrates acts of resistance, sings a gender-fluid love song, and hosts a tender-angry conversation with the ghosts of the personal and political histories that inhabit us. In true haunted house tradition, the non-human and the supernatural are also given rooms of their own; personal demons are summoned, we are entangled with our wilder sides. Witchcraft, seance and prophecy are invoked and brought up against sharp slices of reality. Described by judges as ‘strong and self-assured’, ‘sheer gorgeous’, and ‘a dark and brooding collection that combines the visceral nature of the body with the ephemeral and supernatural’, bodies, and other haunted houses is a beautifully crafted exploration of identity which queers time as well as self.

White poem This is a poem that throws everything else to the dogs This is a poem that buys tinned tuna Coffee Green beans out of season And finds the excess to be lyrical Full of portent This poem only cares about Walking varnished nails Across skin like cream And looks out of the window Tear ducts moistening To see a Pepper’s ghost of itself Staring back, deeply moved This poem has found The One And dances with them Under filament lightbulbs One hand upon their lover’s shoulder The other on their lover’s neck Starting to squeeze

bodies and other haunted houses is available from on the Seren website: £5.00

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Friday Poem – ‘How to renovate a Morris Minor’ by Jonathan Edwards

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘How to renovate a Morris Minor’ by Jonathan Edwards from his Costa Prize-winning collection My Family and Other Superheroes. Jonathan recently won the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2022 with his poem ‘My Grandfather’s Car’.

This cover shows a painting of a schoolboy falling backwards. The view point is looking up at him front on, as if from the ground. The text reads My Family and Other Superheroes. Jonathan Edwards. Winner of the 2014 Costa Poetry Award.

My Family and Other Superheroes features a motley crew of characters. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo – all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

How to Renovate a Morris Minor That’s him, in the camouflage green overalls, hiding under the car all day from my mother. What is he but a pair of feet, my father, muttering prayers to God and the sump gasket, wearing oil drips, enough zips for all his secrets? On his back, he pokes a spanner up at a nut, as if unscrewing heaven; grease-fingers make a crime scene of the kitchen. He gives the stars in his bucket to the bonnet and when he sees his face in it then it is smiling. His foot on the accelerator makes the world go, his right arm at the auction can’t say No and when the day is over, that’s him, that’s him – he’s snoring on the sofa, Practical Classics open on his lap – his eyes dart under their lids as he sleeps, like Jaguars he’s racing in his dreams.

My Family and Other Superheroes is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Jonathan’s second collection Gen is also available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Don’t forget to browse the Seren Christmas Gift Guide 2022 for last-minute gift inspiration.

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Friday Poem – ‘We are coming’ by Kim Moore

Earlier this week, Kim Moore was announced the winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2022. This week’s Friday Poem is ‘We are coming’ from her wining collection All The Men I Never Married. You can hear Kim chatting in-depth about the book on the The Seren Poetry Podcast which is available now on all podcast platforms.

This cover shows a collage of a male figure made up of tiny images of nature. The figure is surrounded by butterflies which stand out against the black background. The text reads All The Men I Never Married, Kim Moore. Winner of the Forward Prize.

Pointedly feminist, challenging and keenly aware of the contradictions and complexities of desire, All The Men I Never Married is Kim Moore’s award-winning and critically acclaimed second collection. The 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love. She turns the spotlight on interactions between men and women, revealing easy misogyny, everyday sexism and uncomfortable truths about the challenges women face on a daily basis.

We are coming under cover of darkness, with our strawberry marks, our familiars, our third nipples, our ill-mannered bodies, our childhoods spent hobbled like horses where we were told to keep our legs closed, where we sat in the light of a window and posed and waited for the makers of the world to tell us again how a woman is made. We are arriving from the narrow places, from the spaces we were given, with our curses and our spells and our solitude, with our potions we swallow to shrink us small as insects or stretch us into giants, for yes, there are giants amongst us, we must warn you. There will be riots, we’re carrying all that we know about silence as we return from the forests and towers, unmaking ourselves, stepping from the pages of books, from the eye of the camera, from the cages we built for each other, the frames of paintings, from every place we were lost and afraid in. We stand at the base of our own spines and watch tree turn to bone and climb each vertebra to crawl back into our minds, we’ve been out of our minds all this time, our bodies saying no, we were not born for this, dragging the snare and the wire behind us.

The Seren Poetry Podcast is a new series of in-depth interviews with Seren poets. Listen to our in-depth interview with Kim about All The Men I Never Married in episode 9 which is available now.

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All The Men I Never Married is available on the Seren website for £9.99

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