Friday Poem Archives

Posted on October 27, 2023October 26, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Handsome Weeping Boy’ by Kathryn Gray

Black and white photographs of water droplets on a branch

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Handsome Weeping Boy’ by Kathryn Gray from her highly anticipated second collection Hollywood or Home.

Handsome Weeping Boy
I cannot cry.
I have need of a handsome weeping boy.
Handsome weeping boy. His tears are
pear cultured pearls against his cheeks;
he is in touch with his emotions; he
leaks. Strap me to a chair.
Freeze-frame the oxygen tank
in Beaches. These days it is so hard to be
authentic. Handsome weeping boy,
I hear you. Your shoulders move beside me
so gently—breeze caught by a tree!
Debra Winger is dying again.
Handsome weeping boy, with your
handkerchief to stem the flow. The feels
is what the kids call it now, and I— I am
so full, I am running on empty.
I cannot cry.
I have need of a handsome weeping boy.

Join us on Tuesday 7th November at St John’s Waterloo in London for a joint book launch featuring Kathryn Gray, Lynne Hjelmgaard and Sue Hubbard. Readings start at 6:30pm. All welcome.

Joint book launch. Lynne Hjelmgaard, Kathryn Gray and Sue Hubbard. Tuesday 7th November from 6:30pm. Free entry. All welcome. St John's Waterloo, 73 Waterloo Road, London, SE18TY

Posted on October 20, 2023October 17, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem: ‘Daughter II’ by Deryn Rees

Daughter 2. Deryn Rees-Jones. From Burying the Wren.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Daughter II’ by Deryn Rees-Jones from her collection Burying the Wren. Deryn’s poem ‘Consider the Lillies’, first published by Modron Magazine, was recently Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry.

Daughter II

Blake’s angel, what makes you?
Blood, bone mineral? The black space
that creates the universe, would

if it could, suck everything in?
Sometimes
I hardly dare look, the night

losing its own face to the senses
as you, with those owlish eyes
little ribs, not long since

shocked into light
and an appetite
and your damp hair like feathers

nuzzle in beside me,
no one to answer
or answer to. Only

an unlearned joy when you wake
which is ours: your breath on my skin
enough to stop a heart,

to darn the threadbare morning.

Posted on September 29, 2023September 29, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Lyrical Invention’ by Nerys Williams

Photograph of a town sign pointing in multiple directions. The grey town is blurred out in the background

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Lyrical Invention’ by Nerys Williams which was recently Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry. The poem is published in her latest collection Republic.

51. Lyrical Invention
Coming from this “little shit place”, as a rugby coach told us in 2018, we learn adaptive strategies. We are mountain people, under the radar, speaking a language that offers protection from direct penetration. Home is broken down, parables of post-industrial, an adventure campground for another country.
Of course, relish the description by A.A. Gill we are “loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls.” Or, maybe dear reader, if you are into the burn Jeremy Clarkson appeals: “It’s entirely unfair that some people are born fat or ugly or dyslexic or disabled or ginger or small or Welsh. Life, I’m afraid, is tragic.” My friends this tragic life, as we sit in our demesne in soft rainfall. Ron Liddle’s “miserable, seaweed munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill-tribes” comes into mind. Journalists who want our words silenced as “an appalling and moribund monkey language.” There is a danger in responding too quickly, giving ugly words a permanence, credibility.
Monolingualism is no crime, the curation of other languages is a tricky art, but monoculturalism, the impossibility of fielding doubt into your rhetoric? Doubt makes me wonder if there is a salt mill grinding in the sea. Or, that those mountains are fashioned by a giant god, breathing into life birds, trees and stones. Being didactic creates its own loss, disabling, poor creature with open mouth signing into the world. Leviathans straddling the shapes of their own grammar, splish-splosh. Instead, recall how Benjamin Britten’s This Little Babe translates into your language. Echolalia, how to find narrative accuracy not in the repetition of words, but in timing to music. Caught on quarter inch tape, a reel packaged and sent. “Oh, yes the choral” you nod “that old stereotype”. No, what I reference is the force of me, you, us a power of breath to fall and rise without issuing demands. Being here, colouring a lyric’s final iteration high notes fading against a cupola, the roof of a tin shed, the gambrel of a village hall, all the mercury bubbles unleashed.

Posted on September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Case History’ by Dannie Abse

Black and white photo of a stethoscope laying beside a pile of old books.

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This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Case History’ by Dannie Abse from his collection Welsh Retrospective. Friday 22nd September marks Abse’s centenary. Join us at Carnegie House in Bridgend for a special event celebrating his life and work.

Case History
‘Most Welshmen are worthless,
an inferior breed, doctor.’
He did not know I was Welsh.
Then he praised the architects
of the German death-camps –
did not know I was a Jew.
He called liberals, ‘White blacks’,
and continued to invent curses.
When I palpated his liver
I felt the soft liver of Goering;
when I lifted my stethoscope
I heard the heartbeats of Himmler;
when I read his encephalograph
I thought, ‘Sieg heil, mein Führer.’
In the clinic’s dispensary
red berry of black bryony,
cowbane, deadly nightshade, deathcap.
Yet I prescribed for him
as if he were my brother.
Later that night I must have slept
on my arm: momentarily
my right hand lost its cunning.

Dannie Abse Remembered: Centenary Celebration. From 7pm Friday 22nd September 2023. Carnegie House, 14 Wnydham Street, Bridgend, CF31 1EF. £5.50 general admission. £3.50 concessions.

Buy tickets

Posted on September 8, 2023September 8, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Angels on the Washing Lines’ by Sue Hubbard

Black and white image of laundry blowing in the wind on a washing line

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Angels on the Washing Lines’ by Sue Hubbard from her new collection God’s Little Artist which details the life and work of Welsh artist Gwen John (1876 – 1939).

Angels on the Washing Lines
She hangs her wet stockings
outside the attic window.
Her petticoat and white muslin blouse
to drip-dry between chimney pots
in the first rays of morning sun.
Sweeps the bare floor,
rinses her pink china cup
in the stone sink.
Each act mindful:
a bead, a knot on the rosary
of her days.
Barefoot, she stands, now,
with the poor, watching
her culottes billow and dance
in the wind
like angels on the washing line,
teaching her detachment,
obedience, purity.

Posted on September 1, 2023September 5, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Greenery’ by Judy Brown

Two tall apartment blocks flank the photograph. In the middle is a forest.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Greenery’ from Judy Brown’s latest collection Lairs.

Greenery
When I moved to the city that no longer exists it was September. The air was brown fur growing thick round the candy cane buildings that poked through cloud and were lost. I could breathe, I could talk, but my bones grew longer and rang when sheet lightning flashed its show over the mainland. I ate without using knives or forks - not to be feral, but to slow myself down.

Don’t miss out on seeing Judy Brown and Graham Davies at our upcoming virtual First Thursday event. Tickets are £2 plus an Eventbrite fee. Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/705815231357.

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Simon appleby

The Seren Christmas Poetry Competition Returns!

Yes you read that right, we’re already thinking about Christmas! We’re excited to announce the return of our annual Christmas Poetry Competition.

With only three months left until the big day, it’s time to put on your festive thinking caps and send in your best seasonal poems.

What’s the prize? The winning entry will be posted right here on the Seren blog as Friday Poem during December and you will also receive a Seren book bundle (your choice of fiction or poetry) and a small festive hamper.

How to enter? Upload your poem via our Google form as a Word Doc or PDF. The full rules, terms and conditions can be found at the top of the form.

Closing date: 23:59PM, Sunday 15th November

Entry form

Good luck!

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Clear’ by Elizabeth Parker

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Clear’ by Elizabeth Parker from her debut collection In Her Shambles. We would like to wish Elizabeth and her family congratulations on the birth of their new baby boy Danny.

Spiky, provocative, declamatory, these energetic poems sweep the reader along through their narratives. In Her Shambles introduces us to a poet who uses language with verve and zest. Her subjects range from a poem where family members are embodied by their own rivers, to carefully observed set-pieces inspired by relationships, from burgeoning first loves to break-ups.

“a radiantly-written and vigorous collection by a rising star of British poetry.” – David Morley

In Her Shambles is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

Don’t miss the Seren Stay-at-Home Series taking place online between Tuesday 12th and Friday 22nd May. View the programme and buy tickets here.

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Boom!’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Boom!’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke, the title poem from her collection of the same name, and appears in the anthology Writing Motherhood.

A celebration of parenthood, the poems chronicle all the ups and downs of raising a family, from the rapturous moments, such as ‘Wakening’ where the baby is observed: ‘the seedling eyes stirred by sunlight’. To the tragi-comic ‘Nights’ full of ‘small elbows in the face’ and ‘assailed by colds and colic’ and the darker fears and depressions that can afflict parents.

As we comtemplate the feelings of wonder and love evoked by ‘Boom!’ We dedicate the weekly poem to Seren poets who have recently become new mothers: Kim Moore (May 24th) and Emily Blewitt (May 31st).

BOOM! is available from the Seren website: £9.99

Writing Motherhood is available on the Seren website: £12.99

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

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘The Glass King of France’ by Sheenagh Pugh

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘The Glass King of France’ by Sheenagh Pugh, from her latest collection Afternoons Go Nowhere.

A fascination for history, both as a source of human drama and a field for artful speculation, characterises this collection of poems by Sheenagh Pugh. In Afternoons Go Nowhere the past seems more relevant to the present than ever, human nature never entirely predictable and often non-sensical, the natural world seeming full of a paradoxical beauty. Complex but with clear themes and lucid, musical language, Sheenagh Pugh’s tenth collection will delight discriminating readers.

Afternoons Go Nowhere is available from the Seren website: £9.99

Sheenagh also features in our Poems from Cardiff pamphlet available on the Seren website: £5.00

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