How to (almost) give a poet a heart attack:

1. Delay delivery of their book until day before the tour starts.
2. Make poet wait in all day giving delivery time as simply before 18:00.
3. At 15.55 park a TNT lorry outside poet's house. Do nothing for 10 minutes.
4. Do not knock on poet's door. Instead knock on her neighbour's door who is out. Then go up one house and ask that neighbour to take box.
5. As neighbour signs for box find poet standing in the street in their socks, saying in a really small voice 'Excuse me, is that box for me?' Both say 'No!'
6. Hear poet say 'B-b-but, do you have another delivery for me. I'm expecting a TNT delivery today...?'
7. Say 'No, I've nothing for you.'
8. See poet turn to neighbour and ask 'Please, can you just read out the house number on the box.'
9. See neighbour go 'oh' after reading poet's house number out.
10. Give box of books to poet.

The rest have gone to the usual places, I hope!

And breathe out!

Better Houses on Tour

'They are beautiful. Tell your friends I said you write beautiful poems. Vivid with sharp imagery and delicious phrasing.' – Salena Godden knows how to cheer a girl up on a pre-launch Sunday! I've lots of gigs coming up, do come, here's a lovely poster Torben made for me with the dates and venues (click to make bigger.)... 

At Free Verse I've just got a stall and will sign books, come to The Wheatsheaf in November for the London reading!

Susie Wild

BETTER HOUSES

• £8.99
 

Pre-order a signed copy for £8.99 and free P&P [The Parthian summer sales is on at the moment so you can get an extra £3 off at the checkout for either Better Houses or my story collection The Art of Contraception]

This book officially launches 1 October 2017

This lively first collection from Susie Wild introduces a poet with a nomadic spirit. She tramps with humour, love, and loss across the UK, even the globe, seeking a place to call home.

'These poems are spells whose words bewitch the ordinary and transform the objects and routines of our human world with their word-magic.' – Gillian Clarke 

'The world shifts and transforms itself in these subtly disconcerting poems: words into bees, surgical stitches into mascaraed eyelashes, a fossil oyster into a lover's toenails. The effect can be darkly sinister or exuberantly witty, but it's always new and refreshing. This is an exciting and assured poetic debut.'  – Matthew Francis 

‘Susie Wild writes with poise and precision about the places we inhabit, casting a benevolent spell over her reader.’ – Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch

'The voice is concentrated, urgent; the material is often tender, even domestic. There is no contradiction in this. The poems come from raw edges of the spaces between people, and a sense of how provisional the tender things can be.' – Philip Gross

Better Houses charts the move from childhood to adult life with wit and wonder. In a state of constant displacement, the poems flit from tents and gypsy caravans to boarding school, to lodgings and house sitting. The collection offers a half-remembered, half-invented life of pub crawl dates and doors slamming, as the narrators fall in and out of love and a life packing and unpacking boxes. 

These poems hunt fossils and comets, escape fires and great white sharks, consider life on other planets, and prophesize white witches. In Wild’s playful, offbeat take on the mundane world, beds and language barriers are tested, areas are gentrified, lawns are mown, and heart rates checked.

Susie Wild is author of the short story collection The Art of Contraception (Parthian 2010) listed for the Edge Hill Prize, and the novella Arrivals (Parthian 2011). Her writing appears in publications like Poetry Digest, The Lonely Crowd, Wales Arts Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Lampeter Review, and Rising. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University and an MA in Journalism from Goldsmiths. Awarded a place on Ty Newydd’s poetry masterclass, she has studied creative writing with Gillian Clarke and Imtiaz Dharker. She was writer in residence at the Mothership, Dorset, and her poems have been an Ink Sweat & Tears Pick of the Month, and a First Thursday performance winner.  She has performed her poems at events like the Glastonbury Festival, Hay Festival, the Green Man Festival, and the Dylan Weekend. Her recent multimedia commission, ‘Sex Change Disco,’ in collaboration with artist Beth Greenhalgh, was performed at Made in Roath and Cardiff Contemporary 2016. Born in London, she lives in a house with a garden and a shed in Cardiff, sharing it with a German prop maker and their Welsh cat. 

Twitter: @Soozerama

Arrivals in Kobo ebook sale

Happy International Women's Day! 

My ebook novella 'Arrivals' (and three other great Parthian titles) can be picked up in Kobo’s US and Canadian stores 'Celebrating Women Around The World' ebook sale, which is running from March 7th-12th.

Enjoy!

Susie x

Announcing Collective

Hi Lovelies,

I hope you are being kind to yourselves and each other in these testing times and have managed to jump about in some autumn leaves like I have.

I wanted to tell you about a free event I'm taking part in on the 1st of December at Little Man in Cardiff. I'm looking forward to reading new poems at Collective – an evening celebrating poets who have recently published (or are due to publish) a new collection. 

Entertaining, amusing, thought-provoking, and surreal, this event will feature eight fantastic poets, representing six presses, including: 

MAB JONES (Indigo Dreams Publishing)

MARK BLAYNEY (Parthian)
TRACEY RHYS (Green Bottle Press)
RHYS MILSOM (Accent Press) 

SUSIE WILD (Parthian)
REBECCA PARFITT (Listen Softly London)
NATALIE ANN HOLBOROW (Parthian)
EMILY BLEWITT (Seren)

I hope to see some many of you there. 

In other poetry news I had an excellent week at Ty Newydd on the Autumn Poetry Masterclass with Gillian Clarke and Imtiaz Dharker last month where I wrote and edited a lot of poems, took poet walks along the beach, won a copy of Gillian's collection Ice for good poetry guess skills and edited the anthology of 18 poets Cynefin.

I returned and moved straight from the train into performance mode, for the second instalment of our mixed media, performance art and spoken word piece Sex Change Disco (writing a brand new scene on the long train home). Beth and I performed to a packed room as part of the beautiful creative madness that was TactileBOSCH's Garden of Earthly Delights at Cardiff Contemporary. It was a joy to be a part of, and amazing to see so many people through the door.

Since then I've met and workshopped new poems with both of my poetry groups and then went on to win the First Thursday Open Mic earlier this month with one of those. I was very pleased as I won another poetry book, this time from Seren, thanks Amy Wack.

I've also been pleased to see elysiumgallery, who I work for from time to time, getting some excellent press and about time too. They work so hard to keep creativity happening in Swansea and beyond and deserve huge support.

I think that's all my news for now, I best write / edit some more poems now as it is two poetry workshops in a week time again!

Love and sparkle,

Susie x

Cynefin at Tŷ Newydd

Sex Change Disco: Act Two

Thanks to John Abell for the poster and Torben Schacht for the photos.

More thanks to all who came along to see us at The Garden of Earthly Delights as part of Cardiff Contemporary and those who lent us props.

Susie & Beth x

Poetry and Disco Dancing

Hi Lovelies,

It is Sunday. I have had a wonderful morning of not having to get up and do anything or be anywhere except in bed with Handsome Man and Softie Kitten. After a lot of running around... from Waterstones London Piccadilly to a rugby club in the valleys... this past couple of weeks it has been pure bliss. There's been all sorts of exciting things happening for a plethora of Parthian launches and S4C filming and other events.

On top of the publishing silly season, I also thought it would be a great idea to collaborate with Beth Greenhalgh on a new piece – Sex Change Disco – commissioned for Made in Roath festival. It turned out it was and we had a blast dancing with you all on Friday night. Although my immune system may disagree...

After taking the show down yesterday and painting my hair ready for next week's performance, I have been lazily catching up on my writer admin and social media. But now to get busy and gather ALL of my poems and poems in progress together to print and pack for a mini creative adventure.


I'm SUPER excited to be off on the Poetry Autumn Masterclass at Ty Newydd THIS week and grateful for the bursary helping me to go. It'll be my first visit to the house and everyone tells me I will love it. I am hoping the muse is kind to me and I can knock my first poetry collection into better shape while I am there.

I get back on Sat 22 October and then I will be zooming home, changing and then rushing down to the Bay to help finish setting up and running through the new bits of Sex Change Disco at Garden of Earthly Delights... come along!

Love and glitter,

Susie x