Wildlife

  We've run off to the Dodecanese for a couple of weeks... will send smoke signals or similar on National Poetry Day. Otherwise I'll be enjoying the blue...

Join us at Storyville Books in Pontypridd to celebrate the latest issue of New Welsh Review with readings from our contributors and special guests. We’ll be kicking off at 7.15pm with readings from issue contributors Lesley James, Richard Huw Morgan, Natasha Gauthier, Sybilla Harvey, Sam Christie and Roberto Pastore. Special guest Crystal Jeans will also be reading from her brand-new essay collection Blueprints . Beautifully redesigned by Olwen Fowler, and now edited by Susie Wild, come and celebrate our inaugural new look, new team edition #138. Free entry, all welcome. Storyville Books, 8-10 Mill Street, CF37 2SN Pontypridd, United Kingdom Doors 7pm, Readings start 7.15pm Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/8vvvgHP9a Lesley James was shortlisted for the Borzello Poetry Prize, part of this year’s New Welsh Writing Awards. She is part of the Representing Wales 2024/5 cohort and has work in Afonydd , Cardiff 75 , Spelt and Black Iris . Earlier this year, she won a Big Welsh Rhyme Time comm...

 

Gosh! The Bright Young Things Series launched in Swansea 15 years ago today, and in Cardiff 15 years ago yesterday.

Join us at The Poetry Pharmacy Lab in Bishop's Castle on Sat 18 October for the launch of Moon Base One, the extraordinary third collection from Jemma L. King. £5 entry / £12 book + entry. Book tickets here:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-moon-base-one-by-jemma-l-king-tickets-1682652682469

What a fantastic launch we had at Elysium in Swansea on Saturday afternoon. Thanks to all who came along to celebrate with us, and to our wonderful readers and music makers: Dark & Twisties, Natalie Ann Holborow, Roberto Pastore, Emma Baines, Rhian Thomas, Natasha Gauthier, Abeer Ameer, clare e. potter and Ben Wildsmith!

The new New Welsh Review Saturday 13 September, 2-5.30pm Join us at elysium gallery, 210 High Street, Swansea to celebrate the latest issue of New Welsh Review with readings and live music. Founded in 1988, New Welsh Review is Wales’ foremost literary magazine in English. For over thirty years, it has been central to the Welsh literary scene in offering a vital outlet for the very best new fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, a forum for critical debate and a rigorous and engaged reviewing culture. Today, New Welsh Review holds true to its original mission statement: to be dynamic, curious, lively and outward-looking, to commemorate the past but to celebrate contemporary excellence and new directions. We’ll be kicking off with a set from the excellent Swansea band Dark & Twisties at 2pm with readings to follow from issue contributors including Abeer Ameer, Natasha Gauthier, Natalie Ann Holborow, Roberto Pastore and clare e. potter as well as more great music from Ben Wildsmith...

Thursday 16 October 7pm Waterstones Cardiff Join us in store as we welcome Roberto Pastore and Ben Rhys Palmer for the launch of two joyful, tender, and deeply human poetry collections. An evening of conversation, with readings and a Q&A, chaired by Parthian Books' publishing editor, Susie Wild.  https://www.waterstones.com/events/poetry-launch-roberto-pastore-and-ben-rhys-palmer/cardiff Roberto Pastore's sophomore collection  Graveyards on Other Planets  offers up a patchwork of epiphanies, missing people, stigmata, Steven Carrington’s eyes, power cuts and the shadow of war. Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed. In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own ‘sad heartsong’. Here are poems that feel bo...

Out next month: three brand new poetry collections from Parthian: Graveyards On Other Planets – Roberto Pastore: ' Profound, darkly funny, and deeply human.' – Joshua Jones In his sophomore collection, Roberto Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed.  ‘I attend the reunion of myself./ Swapping out lime water for chamomile tea./ Comb-over days in which we refuse to accept what is lost.’   In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own  ‘sad heartsong’ .  Here are poems that feel both intimate and timely, yet somehow beamed in from another planet, far, far away. Breakfast with the Scavengers – Ben Rhys Palmer: 'These poems are romantic, apocalyptic, welcoming, terrifying, funny and heartbreaking all at once.' – Caroline Bird...