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It is has just been announced that Katrina Naomi will be poet in residence at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall in 2018. This is the first time that the Leach Pottery, one of the most respected and influential potteries in the world, has held a residency for a writer. Katrina has recently returned from an Arts Council-England funded visit to Japan, where she spent six weeks writing in response to a journey in the haiku poet Basho’s footsteps.  The Leach Pottery has strong links to Japan, having been founded in 1920 by potters Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, and Katrina is looking forward to exploring the Cornwall-Japan connection, as well as the links between pottery and poetry. For further information visit the Leach Pottery website: www.leachpottery.com Katrina’s collection The Way the Crocodile Taught Me was published by Seren in 2016.

Enter our giveaway to win a copy of Sax Burglar Blues, Robert Walton’s lively and complex new collection of poetry.
To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st January:https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup
About Sax Burglar Blues:Not so much a discovery as a re-discovery, Robert Walton’s new book of poems, Sax Burglar Blues, is his first full collection since winning a Welsh Arts Council Prize in the 70s. Walton riffs on a range of subjects from rogue alligators in the Bristol docks to a bus named after Dusty Springfield. Years of experience give his work both a spiky mien and an artful complexity.
 
The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random from all our email subscribers on 1st January 2018, so make sure you sign up to Seren News before this deadline to be in with a chance of winning.
Feeling generous? Why not invite your friends to enter, by signing up using the link below:http://serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup
 
Congratulations to last month’s winner, who is now enjoying a copy of Dark Land, Dark Skies by Martin Griffiths.
 
 

Kim Moore has scooped up the prestigious Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for her debut collection of poetry, The Art of Falling.
The Art of Falling covers everything from Moore’s experiences as a trumpet teacher to her father’s profession as a scaffolder, as well as the suffragettes and a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. In ‘My People’, she writes of how some “swear without knowing they are swearing … scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers, the type of carers paid pence per minute to visit an old lady’s house”. The quietly devastating central sequence, ‘How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping’, is the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact, inspired by personal experience.
The judges, poets Gillian Clarke and Katharine Towers, and the New Statesman’s Tom Gatti, said that Moore’s poems “accrue force and vigour as they speak to each other across the pages, delivering a thrilling encounter with language at its most irresistible and essential”.
The Geoffrey Faber prize, which is worth £1,500, is given in alternate years to a volume of verse and a volume of prose fiction “of the greatest literary merit”. It has been won in the past by Seamus Heaney, Tony Harrison, JM Coetzee and Eimear McBride.
 
 
 

To combat the mayhem of the Black Friday weekend, we’re offering a dose of relaxation – when you order from our website this weekend we’ll include two samples of Morgan’s Brew signature black tea, and some free chocolate, when we post out your books. As an added treat, we have also scrapped our postage fees for the entire weekend!•
Trust us, there’s no need to go outside at all until Monday – simply have a browse here on the Seren website, choose some new reading material, and wait for your care package of silky chocolate and soothing tea to arrive through the letterbox.
•Free postage on all orders (excludes the Mystery Bundle: Fiction & Mystery Bundle: Poetry)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Unless you’re one of Santa’s particularly jolly elves, we imagine the countdown to Christmas might be a rather stressful experience. With that in mind, we’ve prepared some mystery book bundles – the ideal affordable self-gift! (Or, if you’re feeling particularly generous, a gift for someone else.)
Coming in Fiction and Poetry varieties, these lovingly gift-wrapped parcels contain three books from our fantastic Seren list – and are just £9.99.
For the Fiction Bundle, we’ve chosen a mix of enthralling literary novels and absorbing short stories. No matter what you get, you can expect to be glued to your comfiest chair for at least a few days.
For the Poetry Bundle, we’ve selected a blend of exciting debuts and powerful works from established poets. We can’t tell you what you’re likely to receive as it would ruin the surprise, but we have a wonderful mix of things ready to wrap up. 
Find our Mystery Fiction Bundle and Mystery Poetry Bundle on the Seren website – while stocks last.