New Releases

Posted on by

‘The Ivy Hides the Fig-ripe Duchess’

Seren is pleased to announce the newest poetry collection by Welsh writer Ellie Evans is released on 13th June 2011, head to the Seren website to get your copy today!

The Ivy Hides the Fig-ripe Duchess is an exhilarating first collection of poems from Ellie Evans. Using a surrealist palette of imagery and a tightly focused idiom, the author takes us on strange journeys:to the post-apocalyptic world of the title poem, or into a skewed 18th century Venice in ‘The Zograscope’. These strange worlds are always to the purpose, they are, as Marianne Moore famously said of poetry ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’ We obliquely unearth childhood trauma, fraught or intense relationships and also a singular (and perhaps also Welsh?) delight in rebellion, and in escape through the imagination. Poems like ‘Picnic with Earthquakes’ and ‘Jekyl Island, Georgia’ deftly align exotic locales (Eastern Europe, South East Asia, Greece and the USA,) with intimate states of mind. A fascination with art and history emerge in: ‘A Brief History of Topiary’ and ‘Two Monologues from The Odyssey’. There is also a palpable delight in technique: you will find a sonnet, a villanelle, triolets and a concise free verse where she employs rhyme, half-rhyme, and subtle alliteration.

Seren will keep you posted on reviews and comments on Evans’s poetry collection.

To find out more about Seren and Ellie Evans search our blog or go to our website http://www.serenbooks.com/

Posted on by

‘Noteworthy’

Noteworthy

Author:

Bruce Cardwell

Music makers are the focus of Bruce Cardwell latest book of black and white reportage and portrait photography. Practitioners of acoustic and vocal music – folk, gospel, opera, choral, classical and ethnic – in Wales as the start of the twenty first century make a rich and diverse gallery of talent. Cardwell’s subjects range from harpists Catrin Finch and Elinor Bennett, through Bryn Terfel, conductor Owain Arwel Hughes and Incredible String Band songwriter Robin Williamson to Welsh bagpipers, hurdy gurdy players, harpmakers, and African drummers in Newbridge and steel bands in Carmarthen.

Due for release on 4th April 2011.

Posted on by

Nerys Williams debut poetry collection ‘Sound Archive’

Sound Archive by Nerys Williams has arrived into the Seren office this morning.
A striking original first collection of poems from Nerys Williams. Using formal strategies similar to modernist painting: abstraction, dislocation, surrealist juxtaposition, the poet conjures a complex music, intriguing narratives, andpoems full of atmosphere that query identity, gender, and the dream of art as a vehicle for emotion and meaning. There is a playful lightness of touch and tone and for every serious inquisition like ‘An Anatomy of Arguments’ or‘Conversations with Cocteau’, there is a poem that will muse on ‘Canter’s Starstruck Diner, L.A.’ or on the ‘artifacts’ left by Marilyn Monroe, in ‘Marilyn’s Auction House’.

Available now at www.serenbooks.com – Join our online book club and get 20% off every purchase, including Sound Archive.

Posted on by

‘The Colour of Grass’

Seren has a new release The Colour of Grass by Welsh author Nia Williams.

The Colour of Grass by Nia Williams is a story about families, past and present, and life’s unexpected connections.

Helen’s family is falling apart. There are no answers from her husband. She can’t communicate with her daughter. So she turns to other relatives: the ones who are dead and gone. Straightaway she finds herself floundering in a new world of friends, secrets, enemies and family history enthusiasts. Clandestine meetings, a mugging, and the surprisingly tragic story of her mystery grandmother – all of these weave themselves into Helen’s present and her unknown past.

With family history flourishing online, on TV and in Magazines, The Colour of Grass is a gentle and touching story of families past and present, the identites we create for life’s unexpected connections and ourselves.

Posted on by

‘Daniel’s Beetles’

Seren has a new exciting release!

Seren is proud to announce that the Winner of the Daniel Owen Prize for Pryfeta has adapted his originally Welsh-language novel into English.

Daniel’s Beetles is the upcoming novel from Tony Bianchi, originally from North Shields, who now lives in Cardiff.

Bianchi is the former Director of Literature at the Arts Council of Wales and is now a freelance writer and translator. Pryfeta was shortlisted for Welsh Book of the Year.

Synopsis:
Daniel’s Beetles is an absorbing, unnerving novel about memory and forgetting, stories and lies, language and borders. It describes our attempts to recreate ourselves in ways we can never fully control. And in Dr Bruno, it catches a glimpse of the smiling mendacity, at once pathetic and chilling, which some might recognise as the face of a country at war.

Reviews:
“This is an intricate and multi-layered novel, rich in ideas and eloquent in expression, which will be pored over for years to come.” – Owain Wilkins, Planet

“The writing is muscular and at times utterly overwhelming… I was exhilarated.” – Robert Arwyn

“One of the most exciting writers working in Wales today.” – Lloyd Jones, Talesin

Continue reading ‘Daniel’s Beetles’