Jonathan Edwards Archives

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Simon appleby

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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Posted on January 15, 2021 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Crocodile’ by Jonathan Edwards

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

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Simon appleby

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 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.

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Gen’ by 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.

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. 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 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.

Posted on January 19, 2018 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Building my Grandfather’, Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards Friday Poem Building my Grandfather

Next month, Costa-winning poet Jonathan Edwards opens our Seren/Cornerstone Poetry Festival in Cardiff. Our Friday Poem, ‘Building my Grandfather’, is taken from his award-winning collection, My Family and Other Superheroes, which he will read from at the festival event, along with never-before heard new material.

My Family and Other Superheroes is a vibrant, joyful and celebratory collection of quirky family portraits, working-class Welshness, pop culture and surrealism. Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize 2014, Edwards’ quirky and confessional poems harbour a motley crew: 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, all described with great warmth.
You can hear Jonathan read on Friday 16 February at Cornerstone, Cardiff, as part of the Seren/Cornerstone Poetry Festival. Tickets for the event are £7 and include a buffet of food from the Pantry café. Book now.

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

Join our free Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us.

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – Flamingos

Our Friday poem is from the Costa Award-winning book of poetry, My Family and Other Superheroes, by Jonathan Edwards. It is titled ‘Flamingos’ and is being turned into a dance! The humor of the poem makes for an ideal April Fools’ Day piece for all to enjoy.

My Family and Other Superheroes introduces a vibrant and unique new voice from Wales. The superheroes in question are a motley crew. 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.

Flamingos

Who spray-painted the swans? You dilly–dally, 
       shilly-shally in the shallow end
on Meccano legs, your day a foot massage, 
       curve your neck into a clothes hanger
            for your rose-hue tutu and your feather boa.

You’re every little girl’s dream, a shock, a flock 
       of neon signs, advertising candyfloss.
Why do you blush so much? Each time you eat,
       you have to kiss the you-shaped bird who floats
            in the lake surface, steal food from its throat.

February. Outside’s a place of grey
       line managers, timetabled rain, the bus.
But with your silly-billy,Vegas waitress, 
       camouflage-for-a-world-of-joy body,
            Fuck that, you say, let’s all be fabulous.


Buy your copy now.

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – Bamp

Our Friday poem is from Jonathan Edwards’ Costa Award-winning My Family and Other Superheroes, which is 35% off until 14th February in our Valentine’s sale (so what better time to pick up a copy?)

Bamp

That’s him, with the tweed and corduroy
skin, wearing the slack gloves of his hands,
those liver spots like big full stops. That’s him

passing time with his favourite hobby, which is
you know, pottering, or staring closely
at the middle distance, enjoying the magic tricks

his watch does. His pockets are for special things
he has forgotten, no one fills the holes
in crumpets like he does, and in his wallet

is a licence from the Queen and what it means
is he can say what the hell he likes and you
can’t do nothing. That’s him, with a cupboard full

of tea cosies, a severe hearing problem
round those he doesn’t like, gaps in his smile
and stories, a head full of buried treasure

and look, that’s him now, twiddling his thumbs
so furiously, it’s like he’s knitting air.
It’s only him can hold the air together.

Buy your copy now.

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Simon appleby

Books for your Beloved | Valentine’s Poetry Sale

Poetry is food for the soul, and the gift of a carefully-chosen collection of poems is the perfect romantic gesture.

For Valentine’s Day, we at Seren have hand-picked a few poetry collections your partner will fall head-over-heels for. All our Valentine’s picks are 35% off until midnight on that most magical day, February 14th, so take a look below and find the perfect book for your beloved.

My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan Edwards
Winner of the Costa Poetry Award 2014, this vibrant and dynamic debut introduces one of Wales’ most intriguing new voices. The superheroes in question are a motley crew. 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. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

~~£9.99~~ £6.49

The Man at the Corner Table by Rosie Shepperd
Rosie Shepperd’s debut poetry collection crackles with the unexpected. The voice is one of urban sophistication; a merciless charm that teases and tempts us with sensual evocations of food and place. The reader is surprised with tastes, scents, colours and textures. There is a winning insistence on detail offered with an irony that blends into satire.
These poems are exquisite meals, to be devoured amidst surprising intimacies.

~~£9.99~~ £6.49

Infragreen by Kate Bingham
Perceptive, persuasive and intricately made, these poems take the reader on a startling and unfamiliar journey through everyday experiences and phenomena. Her keen eye, reflectiveness and quiet wit endow her subjects with a shimmering freshness.
In Bingham’s hands, the familiar sights and hypnotic routines that normally lull the brain into unthinking acquiescence are the starting points for finding new richness in the world around us and our participation in it.

~~£9.99~~ £6.49

Masculine Happiness, David Foster-Morgan
The thoughtful and winning debut collection from Wales-based David Foster-Morgan. Complex, ironic, layered, fashioned with an acute and subtle intelligence, these poems are as likely to reference Elvis as Borges.
Humour, astute satire and insightful character poems are combined here in this collection of beautiful, multi-layered poems.

~~£9.99~~ £6.49

Playing House by Katherine Stansfield
A concise wit, a distinct voice and an unsettling view of the domestic characterise these poems whose subjects are the ordinary as viewed through the author’s satirical yet sympathetic eye. John Lennon’s tooth, an imaginary ‘Canada’, bees in Rhode Island, cats and office politics are all peculiar grist to this author’s mill. She presents both historical subjects such as Captain Scott of the Antarctic, and common objects, such as household bleach, from a skewed perspective, adding humour, drama and a quietly distinctive pathos.

~~£9.99~~ £6.49

Cohabitation by Kate Bingham
A brisk wit and intelligence characterises these poems by Kate Bingham. Her subjects are friends, family, work, the experiences of any day, but her keen and compassionate focus brings these moments vividly to life. Her gift is a point of view that is startling, moving and humorous.
Reflective and playful, intimate and exuberant, these poems have a wry, deliberate logic of their own which makesCohabitation an engaging as well as an illuminating first collection.

~~£6.95~~ £4.52

For Valentine’s deliveries, we recommend ordering before Thursday 11th February.

Why not share your love for poetry with us on Twitter? Use the hashtag #BooksForMyBeloved to tell us what you and your partner will be reading on Valentine’s Day.

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Simon appleby

Santa Baby, Slip a Story Under the Tree

Christmas is on its way, and we have some recommendations for you whether you’re looking for a present for someone else, or you’re looking for something to ask Santa for this Christmas!

For Thriller Lovers:

If you or someone you know loves a good crime story, why not try Jo Mazelis’ Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winning Significance, or Anne Lauppe-Dunbar’s debut Dark Mermaids?

For Historical Fiction Lovers:

Francesca Rhydderch’s debut, The Rice Paper Diaries, which won the 2014 Wales Book of the Year Award and Tiffany Murray’s chilling Sugar Hall are perfect for readers who like their stories old school. So old school they’re practically history.

For Sci-Fi/Fantasy Lovers:

If you’re after something weird and wonderful for you or a friend this festive season, then you can’t go wrong with one of our New Stories from The Mabinogion; The Meat Tree is a brilliantly bizarre sci-fi retelling of the Blodeuwedd myth, perfect for readers who love stories that are literally out of this world. But if you’re after something a little closer to home, why not pick up a copy of Mary-Ann Constantine’s fable-esque debut, Star-Shot? This novel is a real treat for readers who are familiar with Cardiff.

For Short Story Lovers:

For lovers of the oft forgotten art form that is the short story, why not pick up New Welsh Short Stories, an anthology featuring a wide range of Welsh authors from Carys Davies to Jo Mazelis, or Graham Mort’s latest collection, Terroir. These two look quite charming together, so if I were you I’d get both.

For Non-Fiction Lovers:

Jasmine Donahaye’s memoir, Losing Israel, has been stunning readers since its publication earlier this year; part memoir, part travel writing, part nature writing, it’s the perfect gift for any non-fiction connoisseur. Mike Rees’ Men Who Played the Game is the ideal book for any sports fan, and as we commemorate one hundred years since the First World War there’s no better time to read it than right now.

For Poetry Lovers:

Here at Seren we’d be nothing without our poetry, so why not pick up a copy of Kim Moore’s hugely popular debut collection, The Art of Falling, or Jonathan Edwards’ Costa Award-winning debut collection, My Family and Other Superheroes – we promise they won’t disappoint you! Or if someone you know likes to keep on top of the latest poetry, a subscription to Poetry Wales magazine would make for a fine Christmas present, if you ask me. And I suppose you must be asking me if you’re reading this…

You can find all these books and more on our website, so treat the readers you know to some well-chosen words this Christmas!

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back to the Future

This week’s poem comes from Jonathan Edwards’ Costa Award-winning debut collection, My Family and Other Superheroes.

The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back to the Future

I sit here in the darkness with my father,
slurping Pepsi, passing popcorn round.
The Libyans come fast around the corner,

pump Doc Brown with automatic fire.
My feet are dangling, inches from the ground.
I sit here in the darkness with my father,

as Marty hits 88 miles an hour,
goes back to ’55, to warn Doc Brown.
The Libyans come fast around the corner,

pump Doc Brown with automatic fire:
he gets up, dusts his bulletproof vest down.
I sit here in the darkness with my father,

who starts to gently snore. Now time goes quicker:
the cinema’s knocked down, moved out of town;
the Libyans come fast around the corner

on DVD. My boy asks for Transformers
instead as, from the wall, his bamp looks down.
I sit here in the darkness with my father.
The Libyans come fast around the corner.

Order My Family and Other Superheroes from our website.

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

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