Gen

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Friday Poem – ‘How to renovate a Morris Minor’ by Jonathan Edwards

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘How to renovate a Morris Minor’ by Jonathan Edwards from his Costa Prize-winning collection My Family and Other Superheroes. Jonathan recently won the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2022 with his poem ‘My Grandfather’s Car’.

This cover shows a painting of a schoolboy falling backwards. The view point is looking up at him front on, as if from the ground. The text reads My Family and Other Superheroes. Jonathan Edwards. Winner of the 2014 Costa Poetry Award.

My Family and Other Superheroes features a motley crew of characters. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo – all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

How to Renovate a Morris Minor That’s him, in the camouflage green overalls, hiding under the car all day from my mother. What is he but a pair of feet, my father, muttering prayers to God and the sump gasket, wearing oil drips, enough zips for all his secrets? On his back, he pokes a spanner up at a nut, as if unscrewing heaven; grease-fingers make a crime scene of the kitchen. He gives the stars in his bucket to the bonnet and when he sees his face in it then it is smiling. His foot on the accelerator makes the world go, his right arm at the auction can’t say No and when the day is over, that’s him, that’s him – he’s snoring on the sofa, Practical Classics open on his lap – his eyes dart under their lids as he sleeps, like Jaguars he’s racing in his dreams.

My Family and Other Superheroes is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Jonathan’s second collection Gen is also available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

Don’t forget to browse the Seren Christmas Gift Guide 2022 for last-minute gift inspiration.

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Friday Poem – ‘Crocodile’ by Jonathan Edwards

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Crocodile’ by Jonathan Edwards from his collection Gen.

Jonathan Edwards Gen

Gen is a book of lions and rock stars, street parties and servants, postmen and voices. In the opening sequence’s exploration of youth and young manhood, the author sets his own Valleys upbringing against the ’50s youth of his parents and the experience of a range of pop culture icons, including Kurt Cobain and Harry Houdini. These poems give way to a sequence of monologues and character sketches, giving us the lives of crocodiles and food testers, pianists and retail park trees. With his characteristic humour, warmth, formal range and swaggering music, Jonathan Edwards delivers a worthy follow-up to his popular and critically-lauded debut.

Gen is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

Hear Jonathan Edwards read alongside Gillian Clarke in our next Virtual First Thursday taking place on Thursday 4 February from 7:30pm. Tickets £2.74, available from Eventbrite here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/136594791699.

Jonathan is also tutoring a week-long online course on ‘Poems and People’ for The Garsdale Retreat at the beginning of March. Full details can be found on their website thegarsdaleretreat.co.uk.

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Friday Poem – ’The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me’ by Jonathan Edwards

With it being Mother’s Day this Sunday, this week’s Friday Poem is ’The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me’ by Jonathan Edwards from his Costa- award winning first collection My Family and Other Superheroes.

my family and other superheroes jonathan edwards

My Family and Other Superheroes features a motley crew of characters. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo – all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

My Family and Other Superheroes is available on the Seren website: £9.99

Jonathan’s second collection Gen is also available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

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Friday Poem – ‘Gen’ by Jonathan Edwards

Friday Poem Gen Jonathan Edwards

Costa Award-winner Jonathan Edwards is gifting us a splendid second collection, Gen, which arrives next week. Our Friday Poem today is the title poem from this new book.

You can catch Jonathan at Poetry in Aldeburgh on Sunday 4 November, 11:30am, where he will be reading some of his new poetry. Tickets available here.

Jonathan Edwards GenGen is a book of lions and rock stars, street parties and servants, postmen and voices. In the opening sequence’s exploration of youth and young manhood, the author sets his own Valleys upbringing against the ’50s youth of his parents and the experience of a range of pop culture icons, including Kurt Cobain and Harry Houdini. These poems give way to a sequence of monologues and character sketches, giving us the lives of crocodiles and food testers, pianists and retail park trees. Other poems place a Valleys village and the characters who live in it alongside explorations of Welsh history and prehistory, and the collection concludes with a selection of sometimes witty, sometimes heartfelt love poems. All in all, Gen is a superb follow-up to Edwards’ debut, My Family and Other Superheroes, which won the Costa Poetry Award in 2014.

 

Gen Jonathan Edwards Friday Poem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gen is available to pre-order from the Seren website: £9.99

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