Wildlife

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 eitherJohn GreyorSam Hickfordas 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 itSusie Wildwith her husband ‘Nude, smoking, in the dawn doorway’ that captivates orFrank Dullaghan, his sister singing him to sleep (past, present and future merging) in ‘How to Escape and Other Theories’, deserving your interest? Or doesLucy 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.

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.