poetry

Posted on by

January Giveaway: win a copy of The Other City by Rhiannon Hooson

Giveaway The Other City Rhiannon Hooson

This month we are giving away a copy of Rhiannon Hooson’s ‘beguiling’ debut poetry collection, The Other City.

To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st February:
https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

other-city-jan-giveaway


About The Other City:
The Other City Rhiannon HoosonRhiannon Hooson is a gifted young poet born in mid-Wales and currently living in the Welsh Marches. The Other City is her debut collection of poems.
Sharply focused, beautifully resonant, deeply felt, these poems tend to travel in distinct streams: some reference and re-make narratives from classical Greek myth; others explore the idea of otherness and the uncanny, where actions are done and undone, and the familiar made unfamiliar.
‘This is a beguiling debut from a poet who already has a recognizable voice and emotional register. Sensuous, musical, darkly involved, the poems make and confound their own realities.’ – Graham Mort

 

The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random from all our email subscribers on 1st February 2017, so if you haven’t already, hurry and sign up for our newsletter before the end of the month!

 

 

Posted on by

Friday Poem – ‘Boredom: An Appreciation’, Katrina Naomi

The Way the Crocodile Taught Me Katrina Naomi

This week’s Friday Poem is taken from Katrina Naomi’s The Way the Crocodile Taught Me.

‘Boredom: An Appreciation’ perfectly captures the glory of days lazily spent. In stark contrast to the darker themes present in this collection, Katrina Naomi here paints a luxurious portrait of the strange joys mundane activities can provide.

The Way the Crocodile Taught Me is Katrina Naomi’s second collection, and paints a heartfelt and tragi-comic picture of a fraught childhood and adolescence. The tone of the work is as much tender as turbulent, reflecting the protagonist’s travails. Interspersed with the awful there are moments of humour, of contemplation, redemption, realisation: these are pointed, lively and always entertaining poems.

 

Boredom: An Appreciation

The heavy-shouldered clock of morning,
those slender hands never reaching
past the hours of brown wallpaper.

I don’t have time for boredom now,
to stare at the gas in the fire,
as if I could study flames,

to let my thoughts drift on their thermal,
unharnessed, as if they were never mine –
never could be.

Might I long for a Westgate afternoon,
waiting for the yellow lights
of evening, knowing day had melted –

the dark toffee of it – to listen
to the hiss, the end of the cassette,
re-reading my diary, its brief entries.

And if I sit here long enough,
could I wonder where that jet goes
with its teatime, pinkish trail,

imagine being a passenger,
the tedium of that life,
while I bite the ends of my hair.

 

Buy your copy of The Way the Crocodile Taught Me now: only £4.99 (half price) until 13 January in the Seren January Sale.

Posted on by

January Sale: 50% off all Seren books

January Sale 50% off

The big January sale has now begun – all our books are 50% off for one week only.

Seren January Sale 50% off

The time for gift giving might be over but all that means is you have the perfect excuse to treat yourself instead.

If you’re looking for a new novel to grip you, we suggest Jayne Joso’s critically acclaimed My Falling Down House, a story of modern Japanese identity.

Tony Curtis’ New & Selected collection, From the Fortunate Isles, is a must-read for poetry lovers, and The Other Tiger, the new bilingual anthology of South and Latin American poetry translated by Richard Gwyn, will open up a new continent of undiscovered riches for you.

For nature lovers we recommend Iolo Williams’ Wild Places: Wales’ Top 40 Nature Sites – this is a book to get you out of the house, making the most of the beautiful wildlife sites within reach.

Explore our Poetry, Fiction and Non-Fiction categories, where all our books are half price until midnight on Friday 13th January.

Posted on by

Friday Poem – ‘The Things She Burned That Year’ , Judy Brown

It’s almost time to ring in the New Year, and in keeping with the theme of leaving the past behind, our Friday Poem is ‘The Things She Burned That Year’ by Judy Brown, from her Poetry Book Society recommended collection, Crowd Sensations.

Elterwater Rain Crowd Sensations Judy BrownCrowd Sensations is a worthy follow-up to Judy Brown’s Forward-prize nominated debut, Loudness.
Brown is a poet of dazzling contrasts, of thoughtful paradox, intimate confidences and precise evocations. Her titles and first lines both draw you right into a poem and then quite often surprise you with a narrative that you hadn’t quite expected.

 

 

The Things She Burned That Year

Whole nights claimed her on sooty knees,
worshipping the heat of a first open fire.
She tended it with the caution of a mistress,

offered her past and part of her future.
She kindled her half-filled diary; each curling
page exposed the inky, unburned next.

All afternoon it read itself to the blaze,
settled down at dusk to a soft grey bed.
She was watching someone she knew grow old.

Then she’d fed the fire a banquet of porn
that she no longer had an attic to store.
The printed bodies, the breasts and cocks

were nibbled off by a bright green flame
before the paper charred in the usual way.
And the final text that lanterned out

in the beige-tiled fireplace flared so fast
that the thing she wanted to erase
was lost: even its capsicum name is dust.

 

Crowd Sensations is available from the Seren website: £9.99

Join our free, no-purchase-necessary Book Club for 20% off every time you shop with us

Save

Posted on by

Friday Poem – ‘Nativity’, Caroline Smith

Our Friday Poem this week is a modern-day parallel to the Nativity story, where we see the hardships faced by a migrant couple upon the birth of their child.

The Immigration Handbook Caroline Smith‘Nativity’ is taken from Caroline Smith’s collection, The Immigration Handbook, which tells the stories of immigrants seeking citizenship in the UK – their hopes, their anguish, the bureaucracy they face, and their small moments of triumph. In these strikingly moving poems, the characters step vividly off the page, and we listen to their often harrowing stories as if first-hand. Caroline Smith’s poems are a moving record of global people movement, the story of our time.

 

Nativity

She lay on the sofa
its hard cushions
squashed down into the corner
under the heavy paisley quilt
she’d found there.
There was nothing
left to eat in the fridge,
its door nudged open
swollen with ice,
the fibrous cold
stealing into the room.
Just ice and knots of sweetcorn
heaped in a corner
like rancid yellow straw,
and a bottle of baby milk
left by the Kosovan family
housed there before her.
She’d heard they’d been allowed to stay.
Baby John Harris Farruku
brother to Adriatuk, Flutura and Etmir,
born three days inside the amnesty.
His birth had allowed
the family to begin again
given them the hope
of an ordinary life.

 

The Immigration Handbook is available from the Seren website: £9.99

Join our free, no-purchase-necessary Book Club for 20% off every time you shop with us

Posted on by

Friday Poem – ‘The Infants’ Christmas Concert’, Tony Curtis

Christmas is fast approaching, so our Friday Poem this week is a festive one from Tony Curtis, originally published in Letting Go (1983) and again, just recently, in Tony’s new From the Fortunate Isles: New & Selected Poems.

From the Fortunate Isles: New and Selected Poems, Tony CurtisFrom the Fortunate Isles features poems from ten of Tony’s published collections, as well as a substantial number of new poems. This is a poet whose themes and variations remain consistent: a deep affection for his roots in West Wales, tender attachments to family, a profound interest in the wars of the last century, and an abiding fascination for all art forms, particularly painting and poetry.

 

The Infants’ Christmas Concert

A moment of hush, held breath –
the fairies and robbers, the soldiers
and dancers are in position
– then the piano begins.
This sounds otherworldly,
each note a drop of water falling distantly.

Angels swallow trumpets,
a robot trips and turtles in his cardboard shell;
the ballerina crumples and cries.
They may not know why, but still
perform for us the pattern of sentiment,
superstition and love: we sigh,
smile, laugh and applaud.

“The Rich Man gave them a bag of gold
and everyone cheered on the day
the church had a new bell.”
The couple are starched in best white –
as the singing swells, they marry
and claim their gold.
It is intensely sad and fleetingly
realises the ghosts of our innocence.

Flashlights – the year’s frozen
for this instant.
Keep that – don’t move – stay there,
stay somewhere like that for ever.

It all builds to The Nativity:
Joseph, Mary and the three glittering Kings
change without age, time after time.
Only the baby Jesus doll remains,

a scarred and worn wooden face held magically
fresh each year in the laundered swaddling.
The audience – parents and children in arms,
grandparents and neighbours, point and giggle,
there’s a glow and, finally, we all sing.

This has worked some sort of renewal,
some sort of an ending.

 

From the Fortunate Isles: New & Selected Poems is available from our website: £9.99
Join our free, no-purchase necessary Book Club and receive 20% off every time you shop with us.

Posted on by

Author Appearances at the Seren Christmas Pop-Up Shop

chapter pop-up shop author appearances

The Seren pop-up bookshop is returning to Chapter, Cardiff, for its third year. You’ll find us in Chapter’s entrance hall, Friday 9th to Monday 12th December.

Come and have a browse of our books, take advantage of free Christmas gift wrapping, and chat with Seren staff about publishing, writing, reading – and your love of books. We look forward to seeing you!

When: 9-12 December, 10am–8pm
Where: Chapter Arts Centre, 40 Market Road, Cardiff, CF5 1QE

Seren authors will also be stopping by, so why not come along and grab a special signed Christmas gift or two?

author-appearances-chapter-pop-up-16

 

Peter Finch will be joining us on Saturday. A poet, author and critic, Peter is author of the hugely popular Real Cardiff trilogy, and series editor for the Real Series. He has published numerous poetry collections, including perennial bestseller Zen Cymru, and his Selected Later Poems. His latest book, The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back, explores the evolution of rock and popular music, and is the perfect gift for the music lover in your life.

David Foster-Morgan will be coming to the pop-up shop on Sunday. David has been widely published in a number of journals including Poetry Wales, Envoi, Smiths Knoll and The Interpreter’s House, and was recently shortlisted in the Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition. Masculine Happiness is his innovative debut collection, and signed copies will be available if you come along at 12.

 

We look forward to seeing you at the Seren Christmas pop-up shop!

 

Posted on by

Friday Poem – ‘Without Narcissus’, Rhiannon Hooson

without narcissus rhiannon hooson

Last night, we welcomed a chilly December in Chapter Arts, with Rhiannon Hooson reading poems from her debut collection, The Other City. It seemed appropriate to have Friday’s Poem from this beguiling new release, for those who missed out.

screenshot-2016-12-02-12-02-07
Rhiannon reading to a full house at December’s First Thursday event

the-other-city_quicksand-cover-copyWith a sharp focus and beautiful resonance, the deeply felt poems from The Other City  tend to travel in distinct streams: some reference and re-make narratives from classical Greek myth; some rework elements of Welsh history, both ancient, and modern. There are also a number of poems exploring the idea of otherness and the uncanny, where actions are done and undone, and the familiar made unfamiliar.

 

Without Narcissus

The lack of his blindness shocks the silver water black.
Your palm’s slap against its surface is looped silence:
bare shoulders with their heron stoop,
the wet ropes of your black hair, the empty water
and the stiff-leafed lilies which break for sharp fingers,
their pink throats silent and smiling. Speak.

Over the water the red rock leans and watches.
Your nails like fish-scales break against
the cool shadow of its noon, and the silence. Speak.
Even the fish have voices, even the rough
hush of the trees, even the birds.You press your body
to the dark-loomed sediment and learn its silence, touch the red
heat of your mouth to the rock and learn the syllables
of its unspeech. Speak.

Birds watch you writing the mangled sign of your name
wet hair strung across the tangled mats of cress,
white fingers and their fish-belly pallor, your white lips
kissed against the petals of the lilies.You can speak
their silence back to them so well, so well.

 

Buy your copy of The Other City now: £9.99
Join our free, no-purchase-necessary Seren Book Club for 20% off every time you shop with us

Save

Posted on by

Seren Advent Calendar: 24 days of offers

Seren Advent Calendar 24 days of offers

Here’s a special Seren advent calendar– instead of chocolate, you’ll find 24 fantastic book offers to enjoy.

Each day in December we’ll reveal a different book, available half price for one day only. We’ll have a range of poetry, fiction, biography, art, photography and Welsh interest titles included, so there are sure to be surprises to delight everyone.

We’ll be updating this blog post every day with the latest offer, so keep your eyes peeled!

1st December: 50% off Wales’ Best One Hundred Churches
2nd December: 50% off Masque
3rd December: 50% off Leslie Norris: The Complete Poems
4th December: 50% off Star-Shot
5th December: 50% off Losing Israel
6th December: 50% off Significance
7th December: 50% off A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems
8th December: 50% off Writing the Picture
9th December: 50% off The Immigration Handbook
10th December: 50% off American Sycamore
11th December: 50% off The Road to Zagora
12th December: 50% off House of Small Absences
13th December: 50% off Borderlands
14th December: 50% off Limestone Man
15th December: 50% off A Boat Called Annalise
16th December: 50% off The Harp in Wales
17th December: 50% off Morlais
18th December: 50% off Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After The Beatles
19th December: 50% off Men Who Played the Game
20th December: 50% off Swimming on Dry Land
21st December: 50% off Playing House
22nd December: 50% off The Rivalry of Flowers

23rd December: 50% off the New Stories from the Mabinogion complete signed box setNew Stories from The Mabinogion box set
£100   £50
In New Stories from the Mabinogion ten great authors have taken the Celtic myth cycle as a starting point to give us masterly re-workings with a modern twist in a series both various and wonderful. This box set contains all ten contemporary tales, signed by the authors – Owen Sheers, Gwyneth Lewis, Horatio Clare, Cynan Jones, Niall Griffiths, Russell Celyn Jones, Tishani Doshi, Fflur Dafydd, Lloyd Jones and Trezza Azzopardi.

 

Each offer ends at midnight on the specified day.

 

 

 

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Posted on by

Forget Black Friday – get set for a Civilised Saturday

Forget the madness and stress of Black Friday and let’s all have a lovely Civilised Saturday.

Launched last year by booksellers, Civilised Saturday is a day for cosiness and comfort, an antidote to the deep discounts and high stress levels of Black Friday. We’re eager to do our part to enhance your Christmas shopping experience and help you have a thoroughly relaxing day (or two) at home. So for this weekend only, enjoy free postage and free tea with every order. Your books will be whisked across the country to you free of charge, and delivered with the perfect pick-me-up – a lovely, warming cup of tea (just add hot water!)

Civilised Saturday free tea free postage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So go on, put your feet up and do your Christmas shopping in style. And when that order arrives, we don’t blame you if you keep it all to yourself..

 

Our special Civilised Saturday offer ends midnight, Sunday 27 November, giving you a full weekend to take advantage from the comfort of home. Don’t miss out – shop now at www.serenbooks.com