This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Porch-light’ by Ruth Bidgood from her collection Time Being which won the Roland Mathias Prize. It was published most recently in the anthology A Last Respect.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Porch-light’ by Ruth Bidgood from her collection Time Being which won the Roland Mathias Prize. It was published most recently in the anthology A Last Respect.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Sir John Soane imagines the Ruins of His yet-to-be-built Building’ by Robert Seatter from his collection The House of Everything.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Birch’ by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams from her sequence ‘The Tree Calendar’ republished in The Little Hours: New and Selected Poems.

Our final Friday Poem of 2024, is ‘A Child for Our World’ by Gina Wilson from the pamphlet Twelve Poems for Christmas. From everyone at Seren Books, we wish you a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year / Nadolig Llawen & Blwyddyn Newydd Da.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Light from the North’ by Carolyn Jess-Cooke from her collection We Have to Leave the Earth.

In honour of Mick Felton, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘Post-Script: for Gweno’ by Alun Lewis.


Our Christmas Gift Guide is back for 2024 with bookish recommendations to help you find the perfect gifts this Christmas. Read on for our suggestions, or browse at your leisure on our Books pages.

Leslie Scase
“This thoroughly enjoyable book is the best yet in Scase’s ‘Inspector Chard’ series…” – Nation.Cymru

Gemma June Howell
“Alive and full of energy, vital… like a slap in the face from someone you fancy.” – Crystal Jeans

Joad R. Wren
“A hauntingly vivid story… written with spare grace and intelligence… very moving.” – Dr Rowan Williams

Jamie Morrison
“A unique and electric talent – his work is full of technicolour and imagination. I love this author and I love this book.” – Laura Dockrill

This exclusive Seren Welsh Gothic Gift Set includes a copy of Elizabeth Walter’s chilling collection of short fiction Let a Sleeping Witch Lie and Tiffany Murray’s classic ghost story Sugar Hall which will come together gift wrapped ready to put under the tree.

lloyd jones
New Stories from the Mabinogion
“Jones captures a magic largely absent from the modern world.” – Wales Arts Review

Peter Benson
“Kidnap Fury of the Smoking Lovers raises you up on its shoulders and carries you away.” – International Times

Sophie Buchaillard
“…a stark and terrifying reminder that only the most fragile screen separates the familiar from the abyss.” – Richard Gwyn

Jayne Joso
“Hymns the compassion of strangers and the consolations of the sea.” – Horatio Clare

Alexandra Ford
“…both an education and a song of the heartache.” – Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Angela Graham
“In this powerful collection, Angela Graham shows herself master of the angle of vision.” – Stevie Davies

Richard Gwyn
“Gwyn’s prose is lyrical without being indulgent… Ambassador of Nowhere… treats life itself as the ultimate poem to be translated…” – Times Literary Supplement

Euron Griffith
“Six life-changing, raging and inspiring XL shirts – a soundtrack to growing up and living in Wales that is more than just the records.” – Rhys Mwyn

Marsha O’Mahony
“A fascinating book about a very special and unique part of Wales.” – Iolo Williams

Martin Griffiths
“I must confess to being completely star-struck by this seminal work.” – The Bay

Bruce Cardwell
“…will find a ready audience not only amongst those of us who live in this world… but by all seeking to understand… the connections between mankind and the natural world” – Nation.Cymru

In partnership with Inclusive Journalism Cymru
“…an inclusive, honest, and eloquent contribution to a wider conversation taking place socially in Wales.” – Buzz Magazine

Owen & Tom Morgan
“The sort of tome that becomes battered and splattered with constant use.” – Tom Parker-Bowles

Jen Jones
Welsh Quilts explores the origins of quilting and blanket making in Wales. It’s the essential book on the subject, whether you are a quilter yourself, or simply interested in quilting heritage.

Sarah Philpott
“If you’re looking for accessible, unpretentious vegan food to impress even the most sceptical friends and family, then this is the book to cook from.” – Vegan Burd

John Downing
“…plunges the reader into the cut and thrust of life – and near-death – on the front line… an eye-opening portrait of a perilous profession.” – Buzz Magazine

Lucy Gannon
“This fantastic book is the saddest happiest funniest book I’ve read for ages…” – Dawn French

Peter Finch
“Finch has created a new form of psychogeography, one written on a human scale, alive to social and cultural concerns, rooted in local experience but open to the world…” – Planet

Kathryn Bevis
“In the end, the theme of this life-enhancing book is not death, but love.” – The Sunday Times

Grahame Davies
“Despite the shadows, A Darker Way is like a glowing hearth where humour and lyricism, comfort and blessing are exchanged.” – Carol Rumens

Carrie Etter
“Etter performs a painfully remarkable magic trick: she gives a voice to ‘soundless keening,’ the grief that cannot speak.” – Caroline Bird

Katrina Naomi
“This is poetry of incredible bravery, of endurance and of an ongoing vulnerability.” – Daljit Nagra, Poetry Extra

Tony Curtis
“This wide-ranging collection sees Curtis writing at the height of his powers…” – Write Out Loud

Elizabeth Parker
“Parker’s poems surface with a haul of truths that are dark and dazzling.” – Deborah Harvey

Taz Rahman
“In vivifying and vital language here are poems that hymn nature into being… A marvellous, marvelling collection to both savour and hold close.” – Jon Gower

Lorcán Black
“Strange Husbandry shows love that is difficult to understand, unfamiliar and alien but always endeavouring to cultivate something new.” – Roy McFarlane, Poetry Book Society

Sue Hubbard
“Sue Hubbard’s poems on this often anguished life delicately evoke the haunted atmosphere of Gwen John’s own wonderful art.” – Ruth Padel

Zakia Carpenter-Hall
“Into the Same Sound Twice displays how language, like the world it witnesses, is something radiantly prismatic.” – Fiona Sampson

Wendy Allen
“Wendy Allen’s intelligent and ekphrastic hymns to the body sing out with life and engender a reseeing of the world with a bold eroticism.” – Richard Scott

Betty Doyle
“If I could hand this collection out, like a secret handshake, to all the women who would recognise themselves reflected in its pages, I would.” – Wendy Pratt

This Black Friday we’re offering 50% off these 10 fantastic Seren books – perfect for Christmas, or as a personal Black Friday Treat. Offer ends Sunday 1st December.

Edited by Glyn Mathias & Daniel G. Williams
£9.99 – Reduced to £4.99
Celebrating the best of contemporary Welsh poetry, A Last Respect features poems from the eleven collections awarded the Roland Mathias Prize. Featuring work by Dannie Abse, Tiffany Atkinson, Ruth Bidgood, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Christine Evans, John Freeman, Philip Gross, Gwyneth Lewis, Robert Minhinnick, and Owen Sheers, these poems cover a wide range of topics from relationships, nature and environmental issues, to mortality, time, war, Wales, and even the minefield of parents’ evenings. The perfect gift for any poetry lover.

Lucy Gannon
£12.99 – Reduced to £6.49
Lucy Gannon is the writer of 8 plays and 18 TV dramas or series, including The Best of Men, Soldier Soldier, Peak Practice, Bramwell, and Dad. By turns laugh out loud funny and deeply sad, The Amazingly Astonishing Story is her childhood memoir, 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, a chance meeting with The Beatles in the school playground and her irreverent imagination and determination to enjoy life, really does make this an amazing story.

Alexandra Ford
£9.99 – Reduced to £4.99
Marie Kohler’s grandparents didn’t talk about their past, or how they came to America. Wanting to know more about her own history, Marie travels to the former Yugoslavia where she learns of atrocities committed against Yugoslavia’s ethnic Germans, the Danube Swabians, in the aftermath of World War II by Tito’s Partisan regime. Stories of Tito’s victims – a young survivor who has lost his mother and his identity, a woman held captive in a sugar factory, a refugee girl living in Austria under the din of air raid sirens – merge with Marie’s own journey as she searches for truth and connection in the face of loss and long-held family secrets.

Philip Gross and Valerie Coffin Price
£12.99 – Reduced to £6.49
The result of a collaboration between T.S. Eliot prize-winning poet Philip Gross and visual artist Valerie Coffin Price, A Fold in the River is a creative conversation between words and paint, set on the banks of the River Taff. Considering the river, nature, landscape, history and ways of seeing, this book is for anyone who has experienced the beauty of our ancient waterways.

Fflur Dafydd
£8.99 – Reduced to £4.49
Life is tough for Cilydd, after his wife Goleuddydd, who is nine months pregnant, seems to vanish into thin air at a supermarket one wintry afternoon. Cilydd gets his cousin, Arthur – a private eye who has never solved a single case – to help him with the investigation. So begins a tale of intrigue and confusion that ends with a wild boar chase and a dangerous journey to the House of the Missing. In this contemporary retelling, award-winning Welsh writer Fflur Dafydd transforms the medieval Welsh Arthurian myth of the Mabinogion’s ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ into a 21st century quest for love and revenge.

John Downing with Wendy Holden
£19.99 – Reduced to £9.99
John Downing was the pre-eminent press photographer of his generation and seven-time winner of the British Press Photographer of the Year. Aperture: Life Through a Fleet Street Lens is an account of his life and a career which placed him at the forefront of photojournalism during one of the most interesting periods in world history. Exploring both the glamour of journalism at the time and the gruelling nature of assignments in places such as South Sudan, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Uganda, Bangladesh and Chernobyl, this is a unique and first-hand insight into life behind the Fleet Street lens during a ‘golden age’ of photojournalism.

Peter Benson
£9.99 – Reduced to £4.99
Fargo Hawkins dropped out of school. Now he is a gardener. He’s twenty years old, and works for Harry Swaine, an abusive butcher with a chain of shops on the south coast of England. After witnessing a fight between Harry and Anne (Harry’s wife) Fargo steals a car and together he, Anne and a dog called Radar go on the run. They have £9,653, a bag of apples, a penknife and three bottles of wine. Where will their journey take them, and what will they discover about themselves and each other along the way?

Nula Suchet
£12.99 – Reduced to £6.49
The Longest Farewell is Nula Suchet’s moving account of caring for her husband, James, after he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of early-onset dementia. Her account considers the effect this distressing disease had on both James and those around him as his condition worsened. Nula describes her initial shock and sadness, as well as her frustration and eventual feeling of guilt when faced with the difficult decision to place him in care. There, Nula meets Bonnie, another resident suffering from the same condition, and in turn her husband, broadcaster John Suchet. The similarities of Nula and John’s positions brings them closer together and after James and Bonnie have passed away, this heartbreaking story finds an unexpectedly happy ending.

Edited by Eva Salzman & Amy Wack
£14.99 – Reduced to £7.49
This landmark anthology is a touchstone of women’s experiences in the 21st century. Covering various topics from love, family and the body, to war, politics and displacement, Women’s Work brings together 250 of the best poems by women ever published. Eva Salzman’s introduction considers whether there is a need for such a book to exist, opening a conversation on what constitutes the literary canon. Exploring and illuminating women’s experiences and identities in all their rich and complex variety, this is a must-read anthology.

Daniel Butler
£12.99 – Reduced to £6.49
For over twenty-five years Daniel Butler has lived in the Cambrian Mountains near Rhayader, absorbing the world around him and charting its changes, slow and rapid. His passion for keeping hawks was compounded by two wild birds, barn owls, which nested at his farm and became increasingly tame and familiar with him and his family. His relationship with the birds became the starting point for a pastoral exploration of mid-Wales and the flora and fauna which inhabit it, making this a rich and vividly written account of one of the most sparsely populated areas of Britain.
It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of our former Publisher Mick Felton. Mick was instrumental to the establishment of Seren and a supporter of many flourishing writers from Wales and beyond. It is hard to argue that anyone has done more for the heritage and sustenance of English-language publishing in Wales over the past forty years. We know there will be many both shocked and saddened by this news.
As a very private person, Mick would not want us to share too much about what a loss this is. His determination at holding the publishing house together, come what may, is deeply admired and is the reason why Seren is still here, providing opportunities for the next generation of writers. We’ll miss his dry sense of humour and his understated pride in the classics of Welsh literature which he had a hand in creating. Mick’s retirement was cruelly short, and we’re devastated that we won’t be sharing the future classics of Welsh literature with him to read at his leisure.
We send our deepest condolences to his family and friends.
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We had a wonderful evening reflecting on the essays in ‘The Waters That Raised Us’ at @ffotogallery in Cardiff a few months ago. We were joined by contributors @tayloredmonds, @kathrynellentann, @cjwagstaff1, @moedwards_, @sofia_brizio and @joshuajoneswrites who read from their work and answered questions from the audience. If you’re yet to get your copy of this important anthology, you can find it in your local bookshop!
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#TheWatersThatRaisedUs #Events #SerenBooks #BooksFromWales #NewBooks #Cardiff #Water #Essays #LoveReading #CaruDarllen #NationalYearOfReading2026 #GoAllIn2026 #Ymgolli
We’re delighted that @bethanyhandley_ won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry pamphlet ‘Cling Film’! Administered by @thesocietyofauthors the Eric Gregory Awards recognise outstanding collections by poets under 30, and are a valuable supporting step in their careers. ‘Cling Film’ is available now in all good bookshops!
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Photo by Adrian Pope.
Back in March we had a fantastic time celebrating publication of ‘Muslim Wales’ by @azimwales with an event at Cardiff University. Talking to @hananelizabethissa, he shared fascinating insights into the research underpinning his book in front of a packed lecture theatre. Thank you to Hana Zaman for capturing these snapshots of the event and to everyone who joined us! The event was also supported by @muslimwales. The book is available now from bookshops across Wales and beyond!
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#MuslimWales #Books #Events #Launches #SerenBooks #History #WelshHistory #BooksFromWales #Cardiff #CaruDarllen #LoveReading #NationalYearOfReading2026 #GoAllIn2026 #Ymgolli2026
We’re over the moon that @maggiepoet has been named winner of the #JhalakPoetryPrize 2026 for her collection ‘I Sing to the Greenhearts’. In the words of our poetry co-editors, “This vivid, powerful collection deserves this recognition... We’re proud to have published it and of Maggie’s connection to Wales.” Maggie’s book is available in bookshops and on our website!
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@jhalakprize @books.wales @inpressbooks #JhalakPrize #Poetry #PoetryLover #PoetsOfInstagram #PrizeWinner #SerenBooks #BooksFromWales #LoveReading #CaruDarllen #NationalYearOfReading #GoAllIn #Ymgolli

