Glyn Edwards

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Friday Poem – ‘Sun, Earth and Moon scale model (Oxford Natural History Museum)’ by Glyn Edwards

View of the sun and moon seen over the curvature of the earth

To celebrate In Orbit by Glyn Edwards making the shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2024, this week’s Friday Poem is Glyn’s poem ‘Sun, Earth and Moon scale model (Oxford Natural History Museum)’.

Sun, Earth and Moon scale model (Oxford Natural History Museum) To stand together by the gallery pillars looking down at Anning’s ichthyosaur, at a triceratops skull. To imagine the air as a dense strata filled with fossils. To notice then two pinheads in a display case and an explanation of scale beyond comprehension. To hear you count all nine zeros and read aloud that there is a third sphere across the hall the equivalent size and distance of the sun. To see how you first flinch then stare at the gilded ball and to know what you will ask next. To tell you there’s one billion seconds in a decade and to watch you translate our lives into time, and to watch you transpose time into distance, and to watch you lean so close to the glass that your head eclipses the painted earth, and its tiny, textured moon, and to watch you.

Voting is currently open for the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award where you can support your favourite book on the shortlist. Don’t forget to vote if you haven’t already done so.

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Glyn Edwards shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year

Cover of In Orbit by Glyn Edwards shown with a sticker reading Shortlist 2024.

We’re delighted to share that In Orbit by poet Glyn Edwards has been shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2024.

In Orbit is a deeply moving account of love, longing, and loss. On receiving news of a beloved teacher’s death, a man struggles with the loss of a relationship sustained by deep admiration and unrequited love. Memories of their shared journey are separated in three orbits where the man’s past, present, and future are punctuated by intense grief.

Wales Book of the Year has four categories in each language – Poetry, Fiction, Creative Non-fiction and Children & Young People, with one of the four category winners announced as the Overall Winner, and claiming the title Wales Book of the Year. There are twelve awards in total with a collective prize fund of £14,000. In both Welsh and English there are four category winners, one People’s Choice winner and one overall winner.

Glyn’s collection is shortlisted in the English-language Poetry Category alongside I Think We’re Alone Now by Abigail Parry (Bloodaxe Books) and Cowboy by Kandace Siobhan Walker (CHEERIO Publishing). You can view the full Welsh and English-language shortlists for all categories on the Literature Wales website. The winners will be announced in a live Award Ceremony in Caernarfon on Thursday 4th July.

In the meantime you can support your favourite book on the shortlist by voting for Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award via the Nation.Cymru and Golwg360 websites.

Vote now

Glyn Edwards was recently featured on The Seren Poetry Podcast where he chatted in depth with Sarah Johnson about In Orbit, poetry and his writing rituals. The Seren Poetry Podcast is available now on all podcast platforms.

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Friday Poem: ‘Antipodes’ by Glyn Edwards

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Antipodes’ by Glyn Edwards from his new collection In Orbit.

This cover shows a water colour illustrations of the 6 phases of the moon as drawn by Galileo. The text reads: In Orbit Glyn Edwards.

Glyn Edwards’s new collection In Orbit is a sustained narrative of love, loss and longing. Using a variety of innovative forms, these poems explore grief and how we come to terms with losing someone close to us. The natural world offers sustenance and a new perspective in the face of intense emotions as a man struggles to come to terms with news of a beloved teacher’s death.   

Antipodes We are waiting in your shrunken classroom, warming our wet shoes on the growling pipes below the windowsill, drawing cocks in the condensation until you come in, later than usual, shake yourself dry like a damp dog and stare at a computer screen. Did you hear about the earthquake, Sir? You nod, though your eyes don’t nod. The tremors, says a voice, desperate to rescue you, set off car alarms in London – the other side of the world. You are silent, so close now to the monitor that when you stir it’s as if you’re butting your forehead against the glass. You are wearing yesterday’s clothes. Slowly, you stand and unpin two huge maps from the display boards, deliberately, like a general collapsing a failed campaign. You line up one upon the other as a bedsheet on a mattress folding the countries like bodies, so that the arm of America holds the waist of India, so the Atlantic bathes Australia. They’re not diametrically opposite, your voice is all wrong. If we went down, down, through the centre of the world, we’d surface and sink somewhere in the Pacific. You’re searching the stunned space for something and clench at a shining metal from the desk. You gauge the maps again, lift them like a flag and stab them through with the shaft of a pen. Soon, you are shuffling across the yard in the rain, your coat still on your chair. We take the maps away. Your fountain pen is splintered. Your computer screen blank.

In Orbit is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Join us at Providero Coffeehouse in Llandudno on Thursday 16th March for the launch of In Orbit. Register for free here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/549134123947.

Book Launch. In Orbit by Glyn Edwards. Thursday 16th March from 6:30pm. Providero Coffeehouse, 112 Upper Mostyn Street, Llandudno LL30 2SW. Poet Glyn Edwards launches his new collection In Orbit alongside guest readers Laura Satterthwaite, Gareth Culshaw and Ness Owen. Free to attend but please register via Eventbrite in advance.