Wildlife

CARDIFF GIG ALERT: Poetry from me and music from Ben's new album with his band of Half Truths... Sunday afternoon, get tickets and come along...

Susie Wild  talks to poet, translator and editor Luca Paci, the Co-Director of the Italian Cultural Centre Wales, about the joys and difficulties of trying to represent the texture and variety of contemporary 21st century Italian poetry in one parallel text anthology. It is an unusually sunny day in an unusual year when Luca Paci and I meet for iced coffee in the refectory before his next class at Cardiff University. The world is opening up again, but, we now know, only briefly and we are giddy with joy at being able to meet and discuss poetry and more in person rather than across screens and phone lines. It has been a period of collective grief and of personal grief, a time where crossing barriers with the shared experience of poetry feels more important than ever. After a devastating summer, Paci needs ‘to hug, to be more Italian’. We need to tame lines gone unruly in the production process, to discuss the last of the changes to the text. More than that, we need to reach out, and so

GIG ALERT featuring myself and himself: The return of our favourite Poetry Showcase, hosted by Penarth-based poet Stephen Payne. Stephen will be joined by poets Abeer Ameer, John Freeman and Susie Wild and musician Ben Wildsmith for a brilliant event of poetry and music to bring an end to Penarth Literary Festival 2022.  Sunday 26 June 7.30pm | Waterloo Tea, Penarth Tickets: £5.00  BOOK NOW: ticketsource.co.uk/griffinbooks

  A poem from Windfalls reposted on The Cardiff Review yesterday... incidentally I've just taken delivery of more copies of the book if anybody would like a signed copy as it approaches a first birthday? I have some gigs coming up in Wales in May and June too. More on that when there is more on that… The Cardiff Review A p r i l   1 8   a t   9 : 0 0   A M    ·  "and here we are, tangled up amongst the sheets / in your Twin-Peaks-red room, or is it my sycamore / green?" Read Susie Wild's poem, "It is 4:30 in the afternoon again, dear" https://www.cardiffreview.com/post/2021/01/03/it-is-430-in-the-afternoon-again-dear/

I wrote a little something for Wales Arts Review about a visit to Kyiv.  Already so much has happened in the days since I wrote it, but thinking of George Szirtes' post Despite Everything yesterday and Charlotte Shevchenko Knight's piece for the Poetry Translation Centre 'In Place of Memory' , I share it now... 'Notes of Solidarity is a series of reflections on the #Russian war on #Ukraine by some of Wales’s leading literary figures. Here, poet and critic @Soozerama remembers a trip taken to #Kyiv in 2005 which happened to coincide with the celebrations of the Eurovision song contest.' Read the piece on Wales Arts Review For more information on the Russia-Ukraine war, including ways you can help, please click  here. You can follow all contributions to Notes of Solidarity from  Wales Arts Review   here.

A lovely mention on The Friday Poem today, listen to Sophie and Jonathan's podcast series if you haven't already! ‘My journey into contemporary Welsh poetry started with Christina Thatcher (How to Carry Fire, Parthian) and Susie Wild (Windfalls, Parthian), two women who write about grief, pain, transformation; using modern forms to unsettle, a strong voice to reveal deep vulnerabilities. In those first weeks before Covid became a noun, reading Thatcher and Wild proved cathartic, like lifting a leaded curtain.’  — Sophie Buchaillard talks about developing the Writers on Reading podcast with author Jonathan Macho, how poetry can be a real conversation between writer and reader about the emotional topics of our day, and about the future of Welsh poetry