Friday Poem

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Friday Poem – ‘The Owl Husband’ by Deryn Rees-Jones

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘The Owl Husband’ by Deryn Rees-Jones, which appears in her collection Erato.

Named after the Greek muse of lyric poetry, Erato combines documentary-style prose narratives with the passionate lyric poetry for which Rees-Jones is renowned. Here, however, as she experiments with form, particularly the sonnet, Rees-Jones asks questions about the value of the poet and poetry itself. What is the difference, she asks in one poem, between a sigh and a song? Erato’s themes are manifold but particularly focus on personal loss, desire and recovery, in the context of a world in which wars and displacement of people has become a terrifying norm.

 

 

 

 

Erato is available from the Seren website:  £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Beach Colours’, Faith Ford

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘Beach Colours’ by Faith Ford.

Poems from Snowdonia is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. The dramatic mountain ranges of the Snowdonia National Park take centre stage here, with their craggy peaks and waterfalls, along with the abundant wildlife, particularly birds like the Red Kite, Greenfinch and Chough. There are also poems set in coastal areas, the beaches around the Dyfi estuary, in Gwydyr Forest, on a hill farm near Blaenau Ffestiniog and in a Bethesda quarry painted by Peter Prendergast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems from Snowdonia is available from the Seren website: £5.00

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

 

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Friday Poem – ‘Borderland’, Christopher Meredith

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘Borderland’ by Christopher Meredith.

Poems from The Borders is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. Featured poems range from “the spine of the A470”, through Monmouthshire, over the dramatic Brecon Beacons, and also through the Black Mountains towards Hay-on-Wye, towns in Herefordshire and Radnorshire and along rivers, the Wye and Severn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems from The Borders is available from the Seren website: £5.00

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

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Friday Poem – ‘Easter Sunday, Table Mountain’, Graham Mort

With today being celebrated as Good Friday, and the start of the long weekend, we felt our Friday Poem for this week ought to fit the Easter theme. Today we bring you ‘Easter Sunday, Table Mountain’ by Graham Mort, found in his collection Black Shiver Moss.  

Happy Easter!

Graham Mort writes beautifully about North Yorkshire, but the poems in his tenth collection, Black Shiver Moss, include pieces about landscapes and peoples as distant as South Africa and as close as Europe. New places are made intimate and familiar by Mort’s vivid descriptions and evocations. Here is a traveller who has taken his destinations to heart, reproducing their weathers and textures with a startling exactitude and intensity. A poet who loves nature, particularly in the liminal states of dawn and dusk, Mort move us beyond the visible, towards spiritual and philosophical concerns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Shiver Moss is available from the Seren website: £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Tenby Shores’, David Foster-Morgan

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘Tenby Shores’ by David Foster-Morgan.

Poems from Pembrokeshire is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. An area of supreme but also disquieting beauty, Pembrokeshire has been the home to saints and pirates, the cradle of Tudor Kings and subject to oil spills and annual invasions of summer visitors. The undeniable loveliness of its off-shore islands: Ramsey, Grassholm, and Caldey, contrasts with the often harsh life of settlers, of monks and sea-fishing folk of the past, such as the stoic ‘Boatmen’ of Tenby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems from Pembrokeshire is available from the Seren website: £5.00

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

 

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Friday Poem – ‘St. David’s Hall’, Peter Finch

This week’s poem is Peter Finch’s surreal night out at ‘St. David’s Hall’.

Poems from Cardiff is part of Seren’s pamphlet series celebrating the spirit of place. It opens with a view from the Bay where “the sea wrestles the Severn”. We also find ourselves in ‘Arcades’, mingling with the colourful crowds outside ‘St. David’s Hall’, and admiring the “fit” builders of the Millennium Stadium sunning themselves on Westgate Street. “The Muck and the Music” of Grangetown is here along with lyrical evocations of the Taff and Rhymni rivers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems from Cardiff is available from the Seren website: £5.00

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

 

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Friday Poem – ‘Fieldfare in the Snow’, Nicola Healey

Friday Poem Fieldfare in the Snow

For this week’s Friday Poem we have the wonderfully festive ‘Fieldfare in the Snow’ by Nicola Healey.

Fieldfare in the Snow card‘Fieldfare in the Snow’ is the winner of this year’s Christmas Poetry Competition. The poem stood out from the other entries with its “beautifully observed and exquisite echoing lines”, and became Seren’s 2018 Christmas Card which we have joyfully sent out to literary friends.
The cards are available to purchase on our website – Christmas is almost upon us now, but you can always stock up for next year!

 

Nicola Healey Fieldfare in the Snow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Fieldfare in the Snow’ Christmas cards are available on the Seren website: £2.50 for five

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

 

 

 

 

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Friday Poem – ‘The Cats of Aghia Sophia’, Richard Gwyn

This week or Friday Poem is ‘The Cats of Aghia Sophia’ from Richard Gwyn’s forthcoming collection, Stowaway.

StowawayRichard will give a sneak preview of the book at Fiction Fiesta in Cardiff this weekend. Fiction Fiesta is an innovative programme of literary events celebrating fiction and poetry from Latin America alongside work by writers from Wales and the rest of the UK and will feature authors W.N. Herbert, Ailbhe Darcy & Andrés Ehrenhaus.

This is a free event – reserve your place here.

 

 

Cats Aghia Sophia Richard Gwyn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stowaway is available from the Seren website: £9.99

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Friday Poem – ‘Two men’, David Foster-Morgan

Friday Poem Two men David Foster-Morgan

This week our Friday Poem is David Foster-Morgan’s ‘Two men’, from his debut collection, Masculine Happiness.

Masculine happinessDavid is one of five fabulous poets taking part in the New Poets Showcase event, Saturday 17 February, 11:00am. Listen to him read alongside Emily Blewitt, Susie Wild, Katherine Stansfield and Stephen Payne – tickets available here (£5.00). The event is part of our inaugural Seren/Cornerstone Poetry Festival.

Masculine Happiness is a provocative yet subtle collection which explores the author’s ambivalence towards models of masculinity handed out to us by the media and modern society. There is also a considerable amount of humour here, along with astute satire and insightful character poems. Foster-Morgan’s work repays the careful attention of thoughtful readers.

 

David Foster-Morgan Two men

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masculine Happiness is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Join our free Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us.

 

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Friday Poem – ‘The Soldier’s Song’, Simon Mundy

Friday Poem The Soldier’s Song Simon Mundy

This week our Friday Poem is taken from More for Helen of Troy, Simon Mundy’s keenly satirical, and often poignantly lyrical collection.

more-for-helen-of-troy-rgbThe opening, titular sequence is a series of vignettes of the immortal Helen. In some, such as ‘Perfect Nights’, we see Helen in an intimate, close-up frame: ‘Lying awake and naked but mercifully / Alone’. But in others, like our featured poem ‘The Solider’s Song’, Helen of Troy instead takes on her mythical status, being unreachable: her perfection only imagined, yet all the more keenly felt. The unnamed soldier of this poem has never seen the fabled beauty, yet his worship of Helen has an authenticity to it, with her reputation alone being enough to conjure hope and admiration.

 

The Soldier’s Song

She is so far away
I have never smelled her skin,
Felt the texture of her dress,

Once a voice sounded silken enough to fit
The official picture but it was nothing
I could prove – just a distant
Parting of the air that carried hope.

No woman I have touched is worth my life
No goddess needs it
But she is not for touching
And the years will leave her
Warm when I am mud.

 

Buy your copy of More for Helen of Troy: £4.49 until midnight tonight, as part of the big January Sale (RRP £8.99)