We Could Be Anywhere By Now Archives

Posted on November 24, 2023November 24, 2023 by Seren Books

Friday Poem – ‘Against Blood’ by Katherine Stansfield

Close up photo of a rusty old door locked with a padlock and chain.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Against Blood’ by Katherine Stansfield from her collection We Could Be Anywhere By Now. Katherine will be reading alongside Lynne Hjelmgaard at Seren First Thursday at Carnegie House in Bridgend on 7th December.

Against blood
A cutting-edge DNA test could determine how Welsh you are
– BBC Ne
ws, 24th September 2014
To say this is the way
you decide who I am and who I’m not,
a sample of body that speaks only
couplings and accidents,
emigration and abandonments,
Scotland and Ireland, to Buffalo and back.
To say this is the way
you sanction my belonging and my not,
like those wet days at school
that kept us penned in the hall,
the Cornish kids playing
genealogy games all through break:
and his father and his father.
To say this is the way
you prove what’s home and what’s not,
that identity is a permanent code
you can map in a lab
when a swab can’t show
all the timid love I have.
To say this is the way
leaves me on the wrong side
of a locked door I’ll never open
when for the first time I’m trying
the handle, trying to come in.

Join us on Thursday 7th December at Carnegie House in Bridgend for First Thursday. This month we’ll be joined by Lynne Hjelmgaard and Katherine Stansfield reading from their collections The Turpentine Tree and We Could Be Anywhere By Now. Tickets are available in advance via Tocyn.cymru, or on the door. As usual, the main readings will be followed by our popular open mic. You can also watch on Facebook live. We hope you can join us.

Seren First Thursday at Carnegie House in Bridgend. Thursday 7th December 7:30om GMT. In person and via facebook live. With Lynne Hjelmgaard and Katherine Stansfield. Join us at Carnegie House in Bridgend Town Centre for our monthly First Thursday reading and open mic night. Tickets £3 plus admin fee. Buy in advance at tocyn.cymru/en/events

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Simon appleby

Friday Poem – ‘Beware Welsh Learners’ by Katherine Stansfield

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Beware Welsh Learners’ by Katherine Stansfield from her collection We Could Be Anywhere By Now.

This cover shows a painting of a woman looking out at an abstract landscape.

In her second collection, We Could Be Anywhere by Now, Katherine Stansfield brings us poems about placement and displacement full of both wry comedy and uneasy tension. Stints in Wales, Italy and Canada, plus return trips to her native Cornwall all spark poems delighting in the off-key, the overheard, the comedy and pathos of everyday life.

‘multi-layered and full of surprising transitions’ – Patrick McGuiness