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 made and a pandemic honeymoon is cancelled. Wild continues to bring us her refreshingly slant world view, whether unpicking the domestic, the political or the environmental.
Susie Wild is author of the poetry collection Better Houses, the short story collection The Art of Contraception listed for the Edge Hill Prize, and the novella Arrivals. Her work has recently featured in Carol Ann Duffy’s pandemic project Write Where We Are Now, The Atlanta Review, Ink Sweat & Tears and Poetry Wales. She placed second in the Welshpool Poetry Festival Competition 2020, was highly commended in the Prole Laureate Prize 2020, was shortlisted for an Ink Sweat & Tears Pick of the Month 2020 and longlisted in the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2018.
Wild has an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University and an MA in Journalism from Goldsmiths. She has performed her poems at Glastonbury Festival, Hay Festival, the Green Man Festival and more. Born in London, she lives in a Cardiff.
Praise for BETTER HOUSES:
'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
‘Susie Wild writes with poise and precision about the places we inhabit, casting a benevolent spell over her reader.’ – Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
‘a new, highly distinctive and exciting poetic voice.’ – Jonathan Edwards, Ink Sweat & Tears
'reels gorgeously from a restaurant to the seashore to the night sky.' – Elizabeth Edwards, Planet International
'Poems carefully built to be inhabited.' – Cynan Jones
‘an exciting and assured poetic debut.' – Matthew Francis
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