Seren Archives - Page 3 of 11

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 March 25, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – Denominations

As we are now approaching Easter, our Friday poem this week will be from Damian Walford-Davies’ Judas.

In short-lined, intensely suggestive dramatic monologues, Damian Walford-Davies vividly summons moments of fear and swagger, doubt and passion, despair and nonchalance as an outlaw Judas finds himself haunted by his chequered and extraordinary past. Familiar stories are rendered strange and uncanny as the reader is caught in multiple ironies. As striking as the unnerving images on the news loops of our TV and computer screens, these poems locate us on the hazardous streets of a divided city with a companion-guide who shares with us his own troubling and troubled version of history.

Drawing on conflicting representations of Judas spanning twenty centuries, this chain of poems sets out to challenge orthodoxies and easy pieties. Judas offers an imaginative map of ancient enmities – and dares to hint at resolutions – in the form of a dramatic autobiography of the man whose most famous act (they say) was a kiss in the dark.

Denominations

You’ll paint me gross – 
gripping my shins, 
retching silver coins.

Let me put you straight. 
All I’ve got’s loose change 
for late-night kofta stands

outside the Lions’ Gate, 
where tote-bag tourists 
sip tart tamarind

from paper cups.
On Friday night I saw the city 
wane and wax to pixels

on the screens of untold 
mobile phones. From unbuilt 
minarets, muezzins hoist

the pale Passover moon 
above the gospel
 of the Separation Wall.

Buy your copy now.

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Simon appleby

Happy St Patrick’s Day 2016

Happy St Patrick’s Day to every one of you, far and wide.

And here’s our bookish Irish flag in honour of the day, pieced together using just a few of our green, white and orange books.

Here is the full list of titles featured in our St Patrick’s Day ‘flag’:

Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry;
The Ivy Hides the Fig-Ripe Duchess;
The Scattering;
The Dragon and the Crescent;
Crossing Over;
Masculine Happiness;
Bilbao – New York – Bilbao;
The Woman at the Window;
All the Souls;
The Hitting Game;
Dirt Roads;
Big Low Tide;
Zen-Cymru;
Christmas in Wales;
The Shop;
If You Fall I Will Catch You;
Midas’ Daughter;
Eros Proposes a Toast;
The Visitations;
Playing House;
Midnight, Dhaka;
Daniel’s Beetles.

We have been lucky enough to add some great Irish and Ireland-based authors to our list over the years who have written some gorgeous books.

Of special mention (and visible in the ‘flag’, above) is Jaki McCarrick’s The Scattering, a collection of nineteen stories, many of which are set on the Irish border. One of the stories ‘The Visit’ won the Wasafiri Prize for new fiction, and many have been published to much acclaim in literary magazines.

Another Irish voice that has recently appeared is Helen Blackhurst. Her debut novel Swimming on Dry Land, which follows a family’s quest for a new life in the Australian outback (as well as their search for missing 4-year-old daughter Georgie), was released just before Christmas.

In Liam Carson’s family memoir Call Mother a Lonely Field, the author’s Irish-speaking, West Belfast childhood is described through still-present echoes of the Second World War, dystopian science fiction, American comic books and punk rock. The memoir was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2013.

We hope you enjoy St Patrick’s Day!

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem | My Father’s Wardrobe

This week, our Friday Poem is ‘My Father’s Wardrobe’, from Pascale Petit’s Fauverie, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2014.

The Fauverie of this book is the big-cat house in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. But the word also evokes the Fauves, ‘primitive’ painters who used raw colour straight from the tube. Like The Zoo Father, Petit’s acclaimed second collection, this volume has childhood trauma and a dying father at its heart, while Paris takes centre stage – a city savage as the Amazon, haunted by Aramis the black jaguar and a menagerie of wild animals. Transforming childhood horrors to ultimately mourn a lost parent, Fauverie redeems the darker forces of human nature while celebrating the ferocity and grace of endangered species. Five poems from Fauverie won the 2013 Manchester Poetry Prize and the manuscript in progress was awarded an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts.

My Father’s Wardrobe
after Peter Redgrove

In the late afternoon he begins his toilette –
he has limestone pyjamas threaded with fossils,
a nightshirt of catacombs through which his dreams drip.
He has a dressing gown woven with petrol fumes, between its folds
echo car-horns and the murmur of tourists.
He tries on the long rail of awakening suits.
He dresses from the quarries that built Paris.
He wears a cathedral cloak with chimera eyes.
His raincoat is stuccoed with spouting gargoyles.
He has trousers that are stained-glass windows,
casting shadows like candied fruit as he walks.
His cravat is a knotted métro train,
one tie is an escalator, another a fountain
with Saint-Michel fighting Satan.
A carousel turns silently between his knees
and in it a boy is singing on a lacquered foal.
He has a shirt of hotel fronts
and a waistcoat of bridges under which bateaux mouches glide.
He emerges from the trapdoors of nightclubs
in a wedding suit of pavements that steam in the sun
and in it he marries the dawn.
He has a jacket made of wind-blown newspapers
and a cocktail suit of cigarette smoke
with balconies for pockets. Sometimes
he wears a suit of ash that scatters when he moves.

Buy your copy now.

Pascale Petit will be at Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre, March 14-19, along with Robert Minhinnick for Writing the Wild: A Poetry Course. To book tickets, visit the Tŷ Newydd website.

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Simon appleby

International Women’s Day: celebrating Seren’s female fiction writers

International Women’s Day 2016 has arrived. We celebrate this year by highlighting just a few of the talented women we’ve been fortunate enough to publish. There will always be more names to mention and more works to appreciate, and you can find countless gorgeous books written by women on our website. But none-the-less, we hope you enjoy hearing about just a few of the Seren women writers and their achievements.

In this second International Women’s Day blog post, Fiction Editor Penny Thomas highlights just a few of the novels and short story collections by women we have published over the years. Penny has a talent for finding gorgeously written fiction, much of which is written by female authors.

Penny: Over the past few years at Seren we’ve had the pleasure to publish many wonderful women fiction writers from Leonora Brito to Sian James, from Francesca Rhydderch to Jo Mazelis. In the last few years alone we have published novels, short stories and novellas by dozens of women authors, writing stories set around the globe – from WW2 Hong Kong, to the US, the Irish borders, northern France, or Patagonia, or closer to home by the River Severn, Newport Pembs, Tonypandy or Swansea, not to mention exploring the mysteries of the Mabinogion. All have fresh voices, varied and vital writing styles and something to say about their world.

Francesca Rhydderch’s debut novel The Rice Paper Diaries was Wales fiction book of the year in 2014 and has since published in China too. Based on the experiences of her great aunt, it explores the life of a west Wales girl, travelling as a young bride to the expat community of Hong Kong in 1940, just before the Japanese invaded.

The Scattering by Jaki McCarrick is a collection of nineteen stories, many set on the Irish border. These stories explore states of liminality: life on the Irish border, dual identities, emigration, being between states – certainty and doubt, codependency and freedom. Some explore themes of catastrophe and constraint. All explore what it means to be alive in a fraught and ever-changing world. This first collection from prizewinning author and playwright, Jaki McCarrick explores the dark side of human nature, often with a postmodern ‘Ulster gothic’ twist.

Star-Shot by Mary-Ann Constantine is a modern-day fable and gives us a network of lonely souls set around Cardiff museum, finding strength in their unlikely relationships with each other to fight the silences invading the city.

Six Pounds Eight Ounces by Rhian Elizabeth brings us Hannah King, the ‘honest’ account of a Rhondda girl who may or may not have lied her way through her schooldays, swapping Barbies and books for Glam Rock and glitter.

Sugar Hall, a ghost story by Tiffany Murray delves deep into the red mud and murky colonial past of a crumbling post-war mansion on the edges of the River Severn and the secrets it holds.

Love and Fallout by Kathryn Simmonds combines the female relationships at the 1980s’ Greenham Common anti-nuclear camp with a modern day tale of mother and daughter relationships to great effect.

Dark Mermaids by Anne Lauppe Dunbar dives into East German noir with the tale of former child GDR swimmer Sophia, called upon to investigate the doping horrors of her own forgotten past.

Swimming on Dry Land by Helen Blackhurst tells the tale of the Harvey family, uprooted to Australia in a search for paradise, but finding themselves adrift in an alien landscape.

Our female fiction authors have also won awards for their writing.

Significance by Jo Mazelis
£9.99
Winner of a 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered award, Significance is ‘feminist, Francophile, urban noir’ focusing on the murder of Lucy Swann and the ripples this event stirs in the lives of all in her vicinity.

American Sycamore by Karen Fielding
£9.99
American Sycamore takes us into the lives of congenial American fly-fisherman Billy and his younger sister Alice as they meander alongside the Susquehanna River in an offbeat coming-of-age novel of death, madness and fishing. Gold winner in the Mid-Atlantic Best Regional Fiction category of the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award.

2016 will be another exciting year for fiction published by women writers, with Jo Mazelis’ haunting new short story collection Ritual, 1969 arriving in April (now available to pre-order), Bethany W. Pope’s Masque (a richly gothic retelling of The Phantom of the Opera) in June, and other delights later in the year.

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Simon appleby

International Women’s Day: celebrating Seren’s female poets

In this blog post, the first of two, we focus on the Seren female poets. Poetry Editor Amy Wack has been with us at Seren for over twenty years, publishing countless collections by women. The gender balance of most UK publishers favours men but in our case, with Amy at the helm, the balance is far more even.

Amy: Seren has a very good record for promoting, and bringing forth women writers and we owe this both to the Seren Board, and the forward-looking people at the Welsh Books Council, as well as the skill of my co-commissioner: Fiction Editor at Seren, Penny Thomas.

Women’s Work, edited by Eva Salzman and Amy Wack
March 2016, £14.99
Featuring over 100 poets, Women’s Work: Women Poets Writing in English, has been re-printed. The 2016 edition features a revised introduction and updated author biographies.
Women’s Work contains classic poems by famous poets as well as lesser-known works. Editor Eva Salzman has provided an opening essay that artfully picks apart the statistics involving women’s work in anthologies and points out, with her characteristically vigorous wit, just who gets to choose the canon, and why. Along with co-Editor Amy Wack (Seren poetry editor), they’ve both ranged broadly over the English-speaking world, and aimed to represent women of colour as well as those from the more esoteric wings of the style spectrum.

Poets published by Seren included in Women’s Work:

Kate Bingham
Jean Earle
Carrie Etter
Catherine Fisher
Hilary Menos
Deryn Rees-Jones
Vuylwa Carlin
Pascale Petit
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Anne-Marie Fyfe
Kathryn Gray
Siobhan Campbell
Kathryn Maris
Anne Cluysenaar
Hilary Llewellyn-Williams
Tamar Yoseloff
Kathryn Simmonds
Zoe Skoulding
Christine Evans
Sarah Corbett
Carol Rumens

Collections published in the last few years include Kim Moore’s critically acclaimed debut The Art of Falling, Tamar Yoseloff’s A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems, Rosie Shepperd’s The Man at the Corner Table, and Katherine Stansfield’s debut, Playing House.

Hot off the press, we have Crowd Sensations by Judy Brown, which is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and Lynne Hjelmgaard’s A Boat Called Annalise, which recalls a journey the author took with her late husband on a sailboat, to the Caribbean and back.

You can look forward to many more collections by female poets, and on the horizon we have Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition winner The Dogs that Chase Bicycle Wheels by Ilse Pedler (available to pre-order), Katrina Naomi’s hard-hitting The Way the Crocodile Taught Me (April), and Animal People by Carol Rumens (April).

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – Different Water

Happy Friday one and all. This week’s Friday Poem is an exploration of the significance and power of motherhood, taken from Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s collection, Boom!, as a little early celebration of Mother’s Day this coming Sunday.

‘Becoming a mother changed me in every single way,’ says the author, ‘my first child – born in October 2006 – just about knocked me sideways. There were many reasons for this, but here’s the biggest one: I could not believe how public and political the (hugely personal) experience of motherhood was.’

Jess-Cooke found, as many parents do, that the juggling act required to raise young children and continue a professional and creative life, is both exhausting and fulfilling. Viewing motherhood from a multiplicity of artful angles, the author says, ‘Coupled with all this was the love I had for my children. It completely and utterly blew me away, how much I could love another human being.’

Different Water

When a girl becomes a mother there is no fanfare.
No government re-elections, no erupting volcanoes.
The baby mops up the praise. But quietly
there are earthquakes, realigning planets.
When you ask to hold her newborn you are
addressing someone who just became a tiger,
so be careful.When she soothes the child that has
shrieked for three hours she is the Matador,
sunlit with relief. Sometimes, at around 2am,
she is the only woman ever to have given birth.
At the supermarket she is a calm strong oak
dragging a thrashing child past the strawberries.
At the school gates she’s autumn weeping leaves
of every hue for the loss of summer. Often
she spies the girl she once was and thinks, wimp.
Like grass trees after fire, like crops in new weather,
like a river clasping different water, there is
no fanfare when a girl becomes a mother.

Buy your copy here.

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – A Psalm for the Scaffolders

A Psalm for the Scaffolders Kim Moore The Art of Falling

This week’s Friday Poem comes from Kim Moore’s acclaimed debut, The Art of Falling.

These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, they are not designed to soothe or beguile. They are not designed with careful overlays of irony and although frequently clever, they are not pretentious but vigorously alive and often quite funny.

Already a winner of multiple prizes, such as the Northern Promise Award (2014), Moore writes poems that are both moving and memorable.

A Psalm for the Scaffolders

who balanced like tightrope walkers,
who could run up the bracing
faster than you or I could climb
a ladder, who wore red shorts
and worked bare-chested,
who cut their safety vests in half,
a psalm for the scaffolders
and their vans, their steel
toe-capped boots, their coffee mugs,
a psalm for those who learnt
to put up a scaffold standing
on just one board, a psalm
for the scaffolder who could put
a six-inch nail in a piece of wood
with just his palm, a psalm
for those who don’t like rules
or things taking too long, who now
mustn’t go to work uncovered,
who mustn’t cut their safety vests
or climb without ladders, who must
use three boards at all times,
a psalm for the scaffolders
who fall with a harness on,
who have ten minutes to be rescued,
a psalm for the scaffolder who fell
in a clear area, a tube giving way,
that long slow fall, a psalm for him,
who fell thirty feet and survived,
a psalm for the scaffolder
who saw him fall, a psalm for those
at the top of buildings, the wind whistling
in their ears, the sky in their voices,
for those who lift and carry
and shout and swear, for those
who can recite the lengths of boards
and tubes like a song, a psalm for them,
the ones who don’t like heights
but spent their whole life hiding it,
a psalm for those who work too long,
a psalm for my father, a psalm for him.

Buy your copy now.

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Simon appleby

Happy Valentine’s Day

Love is all around and we here at Seren would like to wish you all a happy Valentine’s Day.

Whether you spend the day in the arms of a loved one or in the pages of your favourite book, we hope you enjoy it.

And as an extra treat for you on this most hallowed day, we have taken 35% off selected poetry titles (ending midnight tonight).

Love yo’self! Find captivating poetry in our Valentine’s poetry sale.

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – Love

This week, our Friday Poem is taken from Cohabitation by Kate Bingham.

Until midnight on February 14th, claim 35% off this beautiful collection in our Valentine’s poetry sale.

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 makes Cohabitation an engaging as well as an illuminating first collection.

Love

There were so many flies we spoke in sign language
and wore long socks and sun-glasses for protection.

Just thinking of them as eggs or creamy worms
writhing, unseen, in the flower heads
could make you sick,

but it was a kind of torture, with the grasses deep
and the air so soft,
not to go out into the haze.

A kind of ecstasy to risk bare skin
in the profusion.

Buy your copy of Cohabitation now, and discover the other treasures in our Valentine’s poetry sale.

Denominations

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