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THE SWANSEA FRINGE: Flying Pearls


ONE WEEK TODAY... I am hosting this poetry event at The Swansea Fringe. Do come! I'll also be kicking it off with a few poems of my own...


Flying Pearls: Mari Ellis Dunning and Emily Cotterill
Sunday 6 November, 5pm, COPR Bar Swansea
Entry free with festival wristband or £5 on the door
Mari Ellis Dunning’s first poetry collection Salacia was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Award, and was followed by The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass, a pamphlet of dramatic monologues written in collaboration with Natalie Ann Holborow and her recently released second collection Pearl and Bone. She won the Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award and placed second in both the Lucent Dreaming Short Story Competition and the Sylvia Plath Poetry Prize. A PhD candidate at Aberystwyth University working on a historical novel exploring accusations of witchcraft and fertility, Dunning also teaches creative writing part time. She lives on the west coast of Wales, in Llanon, with her husband, their two sons and their dog. 

'This is a brave, complex, powerful, angry, and loving book, full of poems that argue, discuss, share, and reject the abuse of power that women and children are constant victims of... It is a model example of issues-based poetry, where argument is not reduced to sloganeering, preaching or demands, a concerned and original voice in the current debate about sexuality and gender.' – Tears in the Fence


Emily Cotterill is a Cardiff based poet originally from Alfreton, Derbyshire. Her debut pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants was published by smith|doorstop in 2019 as part of Carol Ann Duffy's Laureate's Choice selection. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, The North, Cheval, The Waxed Lemon and elsewhere. She is working on her first full collection which will feature poems about child actors, fish pedicures, and Welsh celebrities co-opting space in her office car park.
‘an exciting new voice, spiky, neo-punk in her hard-edged reminisces.’ – Rhian Edwards
VENUE: COPR Bar Swansea. Tickets: £5 on the day or as part of your weekend festival wristbands or pop into The Bunkhouse on the festival weekend for more info.

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