Happy Publication Day: This Common Uncommon

When a local common is threatened with development, one poet explores its secrets, discovering extraordinary natural treasures and wonderful people fighting to defend them. 

Can they save this uncommon common?

This Common Uncommon, the second collection from poet Rae Howells is available now! Pick up your copy in your local bookshop or direct from our website. 

A lovely 5 star review up on Goodreads today too: 

'Howells’ poems shriek with the wonder of discovery ... She is intoxicated by the Common, forced to rework language in an effort to encompass what she finds ... I admire the collection so much, wild in every possible way ... But there’s an urgency to the work here for “this soft flank of earth” is under threat. Developers wish to transform the anonymous “Land North of Chestnut Avenue” into affordable housing in a process which will sweep the astonishing Common away. Local resistance is growing and these poems in part illuminate and record that effort ... But most of all the book asks what sort of future we want for our world ... Very highly recommended.' – Ewan Smith

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Time to stand and stop and stare interview: Locked in to Lockdown with Susie Wild

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...

Open newslist

Guardian open up their newslist. Helpful and insightful or another step towards the takeover of less-informed citizen journalism and media cost-cutting/ job cuts? Discuss... More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/series/open-newslist?fb=native In other media news... The Times and Sunday Times cut 150 editorial posts More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/20/times-job-cuts?fb=native

On Being a Writer in Wales: Odette Debono

'I was never going to write a book about my family, about our most intimate moments, but somehow it leaked out of me, bit by bit, even though over the years I have tried to think about, to write, anything else.' Read Odette Debono 's piece on writing her debut memoir White Sheep on Nation.Cymru ... Odette launches White Sheep at Newport Festival of Words on Sat 21st March. Order from Parthian Books or your favourite bookshop.

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