book
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.
Ruth Bidgood
Ruth Bidgood was born in Blaendulais, near Neath, educated at Oxford, and worked as a coder in Alexandria, Egypt in World War Two. She has lived in mid-Wales since the mid-sixties. The author of several prize-winning volumes of poetry, she also writes local history.
Books by Ruth Bidgood
New and Selected Poems
Selected Poems
Singing to Wolves
The Fluent Moment
Time Being
‘The Colour of Grass’ book launch
Nia Williams The Colour of Grass book launch
You are invited to celebrate the publication of The Colour of Grass by Nia Williams at George & Delila Café, 104 Crowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JE April 5th 2011 5.30pm
Who did she think she was? Helen’s family is falling apart. There will be no answers from her husband anymore and she can’t communicate with her grown-up daughter. She’s not sure of anything anymore. So she turns to the relatives: the ones who are dead and gone.
Straight away 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 these weave themselves into Helen’s present and 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 identities we create for life’s unexpected connections and ourselves.
Refreshments available.
Seren hopes to see as many of you that can make it!
‘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.
‘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
Patagonia Release
Last night at the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Welsh director Marc Evan’s premiered his new film Patagonia starring the Welsh-born-Hollywood-turned actor Matthew Rhys and Grammy Award winner Duffy.
The film is about the Welsh Colony, Y Wladfam in Patagonia, South America.
Interested in Patagonia?
Check out Clare Dudman’s A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees published in June 2010.
Impoverished and oppressed, they’d been promised paradise on earth: a land flowing with milk and honey. But what the settlers found after a devastating sea journey was a cold South American desert where nothing could survive except tribes of nomadic Tehuelche Indians, possibly intent on massacring them.
Silas James fears he has been tricked into sacrificing everything he loves for another man’s impossible dream. But despite his hatred of the politically adept Edwyn Owen, and under the watchful eye of Indian shaman Yelue, a new culture takes root as an old one passes away.
A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees is a lyrical and insightful evocation of the trials of the first Welsh Patagonian colonists as they battle to survive hunger, loss, and each other.
