“Well-written and passionate, they’re all intriguing and full of offbeat observations… if you’re looking to get inside the character of any of these places, you’ll find the series perfect.” — Time Out
Wales
‘The Ivy Hides the Fig-ripe Duchess’
Seren is pleased to announce the newest poetry collection by Welsh writer Ellie Evans is released on 13th June 2011, head to the Seren website to get your copy today!
The Ivy Hides the Fig-ripe Duchess is an exhilarating first collection of poems from Ellie Evans. Using a surrealist palette of imagery and a tightly focused idiom, the author takes us on strange journeys:to the post-apocalyptic world of the title poem, or into a skewed 18th century Venice in ‘The Zograscope’. These strange worlds are always to the purpose, they are, as Marianne Moore famously said of poetry ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’ We obliquely unearth childhood trauma, fraught or intense relationships and also a singular (and perhaps also Welsh?) delight in rebellion, and in escape through the imagination. Poems like ‘Picnic with Earthquakes’ and ‘Jekyl Island, Georgia’ deftly align exotic locales (Eastern Europe, South East Asia, Greece and the USA,) with intimate states of mind. A fascination with art and history emerge in: ‘A Brief History of Topiary’ and ‘Two Monologues from The Odyssey’. There is also a palpable delight in technique: you will find a sonnet, a villanelle, triolets and a concise free verse where she employs rhyme, half-rhyme, and subtle alliteration.
Seren will keep you posted on reviews and comments on Evans’s poetry collection.
To find out more about Seren and Ellie Evans search our blog or go to our website http://www.serenbooks.com/
Ellie Evans
Ellie Evans was born in Carmarthen and was educated in Llandeilo and Cardiff. After reading English at Oxford, she worked in publishing and for the Medical Research Council, before living in Hong Kong, teaching English. She has spent most of her adult life teaching in London, but now is based in Powys. She began writing poetry six years ago, and has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa where she is finishing a Ph.D. Her poems have been published in several anthologies and in magazines including PNR, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Red Poets, The Rialto and Acumen .Evans has given readings at the Bath Literature Festival, Bath Poetry Cafe, Dartington’s ‘Ways with Words’ and ‘The Muses’ Workshop’ on the island of Spetses, Greece.
Books by Ellie Evans
The Ivy Hides the Fig-Ripe Duchess
Bruce Cardwell Exhibition at Swansea all of May
Bruce Cardwell’s Noteworthy: Images of Welsh Music project is on exhibition at Pontardawe Arts Centre, Swansea, all of May.
To find out more about Bruce Cardwell and Noteworthy click on the ‘Bruce Cardwell’ tag or read more on our website – www.serenbooks.com
Nerys Williams Reads From ‘Sound Archive’
Nerys Williams will read from her first poetry collection, Sound Archive, at The Boar House, Laugharne, Monday 23rd May 2011 7pm.
To find out more about Nerys Williams the author and her first poetry collection published by Seren, click the tagged ‘Nerys Williams’ or go to our website – www.serenbooks.com – to find out more!
Nia Williams, ‘The Colour of Grass’, Book Signing
Nia Williams author of new fantastic novel, The Colour of Grass, is holding a book signing at Waterstones in Cardiff on Saturday 21st May 2011 at 1pm.
To find out more about Nia Williams the author or the novel’s synopsis, there is information on her if you click the tagged ‘Nia Williams’ or check the seren site – www.serenbooks.com – to read more about her and her work.
Pascale Petit Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2011
Pascale Petit has been shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2011 for her latest collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo.
Literature Wales announced the 2011 shortlist in both Caernarfon and Cardiff.
Pascale Petit, who was born in Paris and grew up in France and Wales, was named one of the Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Book Society and Arts Council in 2004. What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (Seren, 2010) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and was a Book of the year in theObserver. She has published five poetry books, three of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and which were also Books of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement, Observer and the Independent. Her second collection The Zoo Father was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was published in Mexico in a bilingual edition. A poem from it was shortlisted for a Forward Prize.
See who else made the shortlist – click here
The Captain’s Tower: Seventy Poets to Celebrate Bob Dylan at Seventy
Finally the day has come! Fresh from the printers – copies of Seren’s new poetry collection – Bob Dylan’s poems have arrived!
The collection is available to pre-order from our website –www.serenbooks.com – in anticipation for its release on May 23rd 2011, not long to go!
Visit Seren Books online to get your hands on a copy!
Graham Mort’s collection of short stories ‘Touch’ short-listed for the Edge Hill Prize
Graham Mort’s collection of short stories Touch has been short-listed for the Edge Hill University short story prize 2011.
Touch includes the Bridport prize winning story ‘The Prince’, which was described by novelist Tracy Chevalier as “..the writing is word perfect..”.
From a young child adrift on an ice-filled lake to an ageing farmer facing life alone, the twenty-one stories display a deep sensitivity to both the natural world and to human relationships. In skilfully crafted prose, vivid with detail, Mort examines the strength and fragility of life and the ties that hold us within it.
See the Edge Hill Univeristy Short Story Prize 2011 shortlist – click here
Seren Authors at the Hay Festival
A whole host of Seren authors will be appearing at this year’s Telegraph Hay Festival from 30th May to 4th June – Gwyneth Lewis, Niall Griffiths, Ken Elias, Ceri Thomas, Paul Henry, Mavis Nicholson, Peter J. Conradi and Grahame Davies. Book your tickets now on the Hay Festival website: www.hayfestival.com
Gwyneth Lewis and Niall Griffiths
New Stories from the Mabinogion
Event 146 • Monday 30 May 2011, 2.30pm • Venue: Summer House
Two more new versions of the Welsh mythologies. Lewis spins the tale of Blodeuwedd, the woman made of flowers, into a sci-fi setting in The Meat Tree. Griffiths conjures an Iraq-bound squaddie and a Cardiff gangsta in The Dreams of Max and Ronnie.
Price: £6.00
Ken Elias talks to Ceri Thomas
Thin Partitions
Event 178 • Tuesday 31 May 2011, 11:30am • Venue: Elmley Foundation Theatre
An illustrated conversation surveying forty years of the esteemed Glynneath artist’s work in painting, collage and photomontage.
Price: £5.00
Paul Henry & Patrick Jones
The Brittle Sea, Hafan Cymru
Event 257 • Thursday 2 June 2011, 1pm • Venue: The Moot
Paul Henry reads and discusses his New and Selected Poems. The individual human voice, the ragged vagaries of the heart and soul, the joys and sorrows of family life feature here but this poetry is personal without being confessional, preferring tender observation to sensationalism or didacticism. Jones reads writing arising from his work with victims of domestic abuse. Chaired by Benna Waites.
Price: £4.00
Mavis Nicholson talks to Sarah Crompton
What Did You Do in the War, Mummy?
Event 275 • Thursday 2 June 2011, 6.45pm • Venue: Sky Arts Studio
The broadcaster has interviewed women from lumber-jills and landgirls to undercover spies and entertainers about the new freedoms, the make-do and mend, the hopes and the fears, as well as the post-war adjustments they had to make.
Price: £6.00
Brenda Maddox, Peter J Conradi, Tom Bullough
At the Bright Hem of God: Radnorshire Pastoral
Event 291 • Friday 3 June 2011, 10am • Venue: Elmley Foundation Theatre
The authors discuss how the wild, rural landscape of Radnorshire inspires their work and that of others before them, from Gerald of Wales to Vaughan and Traherne, Francis Kilvert, Eric Gill, David Jones and Bruce Chatwin.
Price: £5.00
Grahame Davies talks to Merryl Wyn Davies
The Dragon and the Crescent
Event 340 • Saturday 4 June 2011, 10am • Venue: Elmley Foundation Theatre
Nine centuries of contact between Wales and Islam. Chaired by the Director of the Muslim Institute.
Price: £5.00
Seren hopes to see as many of you there as possible!
