Wildlife

Merry Festive to you all!  Here’s my Poundshop Dec 25th poem based on my first Xmas with the first man I lived with in our first tiny London flat aged 21 ish. We played a lot of travel chess. Brockley Cross Remember when life was at a crossroads? / How Christmas filled our window from October / to February, its tinsel-bright, streetlight level gaze.  / [...] http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=23575

  It feels appropriate to share this poem from my first collection Better Houses today...

Just to let you know that  I'll be reading a couple of wintery / festive poems at the  12 Days of Christmas Ink Sweat and Tears event a week tomorrow... if you've missed my voice / face. Do come! Live-from-The-Butchery-100380041704407

Darlings I have some news.... WINDFALLS by Susie Wild, out 1 May 2021 Windfall: 1 : something (such as a tree or fruit) blown down by the wind 2 : an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage It is the night my driver’s door opens at the traffic-jam-junction, the stalled red lights. The click as the door in front unlocks. His sudden lunge forward, the fast words, a swung fist at the other driver, caught cold, and I watch–– From ‘In this battle, there won’t be many hugs’, 2nd prize winner in the Welshpool Poetry Festival Competition 2020 Wild writes of fruit blown down by the wind and of unexpected and unearned gains and advantages. Here flying trampolines disrupt the trains, apples carpet gardens, the red moon sinks, lightning strikes, crows take cover and a murmuration of starlings falls from the Ynys Môn sky. In a city of ups and downs the Handkerchief Tree rare-blooms, fists and knickers are flung, crestfallen angels consider dates, carnivores go hungry, wedding vows are ma

I'm the featured artist in the new issue of Time to stand and stop and stare   this week, a place where artists and makers share their experience of isolation and creativity during the Coronavirus lockdown 2020: Hello and welcome to issue 9! Something a little different today as we’re joined by the very talented Cardiff writer Susie Wildsmith, hope you enjoy! Locked in to Lockdown with Susie Wild (AKA Susie Wildsmith) Are you ready? Here goes... Can you tell us a little about your creative practice - what attracted you to this particular art form; when and how did you begin? I couldn’t not write poetry. I have written it since I was a little girl, secretly, and then less secretly, and less secretly again as I have grown. I was rarely bored as I learnt poems off by heart and recited them in my head, I wish I could learn words quite so quickly now. My first collections of poetry and short stories concern themselves with relationships, human quirks and oddness, the strange and the ma

I'm chuffed to have been shortlisted for this! ' It’s Pick of the Month time and the shortlist for August 2020 has a definite family feel about it. Are you drawn to either   John Grey   or   Sam Hickford   as they try to make connections in ‘To a Father I Never Knew’ and ‘Familiar Tissue’, or appreciate, and identify with,   Sunyi Dean  transforming into her mother in ‘Dust’. Is it   Susie Wild   with her husband ‘Nude, smoking, in the dawn doorway’ that captivates or   Frank Dullaghan , his sister singing him to sleep (past, present and future merging) in ‘How to Escape and Other Theories’, deserving your interest? Or does   Lucy Atkinson  pull at every parental instinct as you watch Persephone emerge from Winter in ‘Sunspot’?' 'All six of the shortlist have been chosen by Helen or Kate or received the most attention on social media.' Place your vote now!

I have a new poem ' Nude, smoking, in the dawn doorway ' up on the excellent UK-based webzine Ink Sweat & Tears today. Nude reclined, I watch these in-between hours, neither bed nor morning. We reject time, make our own routines.  Read it in full on Ink Sweat & Tears

I'm back to work part-time from furlough for August, and the Parthian submissions window has opened accordingly! Send me your words to read. Susie x

Ah, and the other poem 'The Key Worker's Wife' has gone up on Carol Ann Duffy's Write Where We Are Now pandemic project too, although the cans are strictly 7up Free and Diet Coke Lime these days  ;)  Ben likes this poem less than the other one.

Sustained – Fra Beecher I was recently commissioned to write two creative pieces for the artist Fra Beecher relating to her Body of Work looking at the experience of being an artist's model. Susie Wild Sustained Scars? I have many, but when I disrobe and stand before the horseshoe of easels for the first time I wonder which they will see. Some are obvious: the playground knees, the birthmarks, removed, that have grown as I have. One above my right breast fading beneath a new sticky-outy mole. One on my left temple, often hidden by a fringe or a side-parting. [...] You can read one of the pieces 'Sustained' and others by Christina Thatcher and Steven Kenwood online .

I'm delighted to have my poem 'The Cancelled Honeymoon'  up as part of Carol Ann Duffy's Write Where We Are Now project! Carol Ann Duffy and the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University have brought together poets from around the world to write new poems during the Coronavirus crisis. Our poets were invited to write directly about the pandemic or about the personal situation they found themselves in during lockdown. The collection features poems written from the earliest stages of the pandemic up until 30th June 2020. The poems are presented in date order and each includes a note about where it was written. They will remain online as a permanent creative, historical and sociological record of these extraordinary and challenging times.

Missing my voice? Hear me read a new poem from the latest issue of Poetry Wales here ... Warning: I swear. 

I am pleased to have placed as the second prize winner in the Welshpool Poetry Festival Competition. You can download my poem to read . Congratulations to 1st prize winner Jeanette Burton, 3rd prize winner Julia Forster and all of the highly commended poets especially Emily Cotterill. You can watch me read the poem from my garden here:  https://www.facebook.com/pat.edwards.106/videos/10216605661115837/ Prizes: 1st - £150. 2nd - £50. 3rd - £25. ‘ On the eve of my 40th birthday I watch a news report about a pet alligator ’ by Jeanette Burton. ‘ In this battle there won’t be many hugs’ by Susie Wild. ‘ At Nineteen I got a Tattoo to Inoculate Myself’ by Julia Forster. Poems awarded Highly Commended by Jonathan Edwards were: ‘Nan’ by Jan Westwood ‘It is difficult to write a poem with a dog on your kneen’ by Jeanette Burton ‘This Black Country Wenchn’ by Tina Cole ‘Motion, Emotionn’ by Alison Lock ‘Inconstant Gardenersn’ by Kathy Miles ‘Michael Sheen Keeps

Want a socially-distanced 1-1 poetry session with me? You can have one... if you donate to the new Young Poets crowdfunder to support young poets aged 10-17 in Wales here ... (Other poets are available).

Listen again to my husband playing original songs and covers on the lockdown Black Country radio the other night. I came back from the loo and was pulled to the sofa 1/3 through a song to do an unexpected, unrehearsed join in... 56 minutes in. He's on for 2 hours, and I recommend you listen to the whole show, I don't marry just anyone you know ;)

My two Cornwall-based poems from my debut collection 'Better Houses' in the current Cornwall/Wales issue of 'The Atlanta Review', available to read for free here:  http://atlantareview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Atlanta-Review-Spring-2020-04.30.20.pdf

Look what just arrived! You’ll be able to hear me read it on their website at some point too.

It was so lovely to spot my name on the Highly Commended list for this year's Prole Laureate Competition. Judge Jonathan Edwards selected a poem about blooms and boxing called 'Wild Flowers'. You can now read the winning top three poems on their website.