Wildlife

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, th...

  I’m looking forward to reading poems at the Tenby launch for this wonderful new anthology next month… do come along!

I'm happy to be hosting something literary here next month, more details to follow, look at all the good people involved! It must be time to book a ticket or three?

It was so lovely to be asked to be the first Broken Spine Arts'   #TheCodex guest feature which shares poems from my collections Windfalls and Better Houses . They also wrote some nice things about my writing that made me blush... 'We’re delighted to publish four poems by writer Susie Wild as our first writer on  The Codex , a new, special project with  Broken Spine Arts Collective  to showcase contemporary talent. Susie’s poetry has really distinctive appeal, with its playful, inventive phrasing and unexpected imagery, taking on almost any subject full-pelt as a conjuror of words. With her intense focus, Susie Wild can transform the everyday, the ordinary – a walk in the park, bouncing on a trampoline, a traumatic break-up, into a vibrant, often humorous and surreal poem, taking us into multiple situations, both challenging and provoking us as readers. The poems in ‘Better Houses’ and ‘Windfalls’ have a stripped-back, seamless and finished quality, reflected in he...

Thanks to all who came along to listen and share writing last night! What a lovely audience! And especially to @artographyalix   and @ShermanTheatre5   for having us and to @mainchrisglynn for this wonderful live action pen portrait!

  Company of Words is teaming up with Sherman 5 for this in person literary Open Mic featuring guest poets Susie Wild and Ben Wildsmith, hosted by artist Alix Edwards . Suitable for over 15s.  Share your poems, monologues, short scripts and prose in a warm, welcoming environment in the fabulous setting of the Sherman foyer, catch up with friends over a beer or coffee and get creative inspiration from our guest poets. All welcome! whether you are an experienced performer, new to creative writing or just want to listen!  Susie Wild is author of the poetry collections Windfalls and Better Houses , the short story collection The Art of Contraception listed for the Edge Hill Prize, and the novella Arrivals . She has placed in competitions including the Welshpool Poetry Festival Competition, the Prole Laureate Prize and the Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and performed at festivals including The Laugharne Weekend, Green Man and Glastonbury. 'Wild comes across as the poetic...

 

On 7 July, Voices on the Bridge returns with a great line up including Stephanie McNicholas, Des Mannay, Stephen Payne, Ben Wildsmith, Nicholas McGaughey, Siôn Tomos Owen, Susie Wild and Rob Cullen presenting and reading.  6-8pm, Storyville Books,  8 Mill Street, Pontypridd CF37 2SN

  The return of our favourite Poetry Showcase, hosted by Penarth-based poet Stephen Payne. Stephen will be joined by poets Abeer Ameer, John Freeman and Susie Wild and musician Ben Wildsmith for a brilliant event of poetry and music to bring an end to Penarth Literary Festival 2022.  For more details, visit:  ticketsource.co.uk/griffinbooks

'This month’s Seren First Thursday is back on Zoom and we’re breaking tradition by running on the second Thursday of the month 9th June because of the Jubilee Bank Holiday. We're delighted to be joined by guest readers Paul Henry reading from ‘As If To Sing’ and Susie Wild reading from ‘Windfalls ’(Parthian). Our main readings will be followed by our usual open mic. Tickets are £2 (plus Eventbrite admin fee) available here  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/352766834097 .'

CARDIFF GIG ALERT: Poetry from me and music from Ben's new album with his band of Half Truths... Sunday afternoon, get tickets and come along... Please note the set times have changed to what we previously advertised... poetry from me from 12.30 and then the band after me at 1ish. There will be food on sale ...

  I’m heading down to Tenby to read in the museum on the 23rd with these sparkling performers. Come along…

Susie Wild  talks to poet, translator and editor Luca Paci, the Co-Director of the Italian Cultural Centre Wales, about the joys and difficulties of trying to represent the texture and variety of contemporary 21st century Italian poetry in one parallel text anthology. It is an unusually sunny day in an unusual year when Luca Paci and I meet for iced coffee in the refectory before his next class at Cardiff University. The world is opening up again, but, we now know, only briefly and we are giddy with joy at being able to meet and discuss poetry and more in person rather than across screens and phone lines. It has been a period of collective grief and of personal grief, a time where crossing barriers with the shared experience of poetry feels more important than ever. After a devastating summer, Paci needs ‘to hug, to be more Italian’. We need to tame lines gone unruly in the production process, to discuss the last of the changes to the text. More than that, we need to reach out, and...

GIG ALERT featuring myself and himself: The return of our favourite Poetry Showcase, hosted by Penarth-based poet Stephen Payne. Stephen will be joined by poets Abeer Ameer, John Freeman and Susie Wild and musician Ben Wildsmith for a brilliant event of poetry and music to bring an end to Penarth Literary Festival 2022.  Sunday 26 June 7.30pm | Waterloo Tea, Penarth Tickets: £5.00  BOOK NOW: ticketsource.co.uk/griffinbooks

  A poem from Windfalls reposted on The Cardiff Review yesterday... incidentally I've just taken delivery of more copies of the book if anybody would like a signed copy as it approaches a first birthday? I have some gigs coming up in Wales in May and June too. More on that when there is more on that… The Cardiff Review A p r i l   1 8   a t   9 : 0 0   A M    ·  "and here we are, tangled up amongst the sheets / in your Twin-Peaks-red room, or is it my sycamore / green?" Read Susie Wild's poem, "It is 4:30 in the afternoon again, dear" https://www.cardiffreview.com/post/2021/01/03/it-is-430-in-the-afternoon-again-dear/

I wrote a little something for Wales Arts Review about a visit to Kyiv.  Already so much has happened in the days since I wrote it, but thinking of George Szirtes' post Despite Everything yesterday and Charlotte Shevchenko Knight's piece for the Poetry Translation Centre 'In Place of Memory' , I share it now... 'Notes of Solidarity is a series of reflections on the #Russian war on #Ukraine by some of Wales’s leading literary figures. Here, poet and critic @Soozerama remembers a trip taken to #Kyiv in 2005 which happened to coincide with the celebrations of the Eurovision song contest.' Read the piece on Wales Arts Review For more information on the Russia-Ukraine war, including ways you can help, please click  here. You can follow all contributions to Notes of Solidarity from  Wales Arts Review   here.

A lovely mention on The Friday Poem today, listen to Sophie and Jonathan's podcast series if you haven't already! ‘My journey into contemporary Welsh poetry started with Christina Thatcher (How to Carry Fire, Parthian) and Susie Wild (Windfalls, Parthian), two women who write about grief, pain, transformation; using modern forms to unsettle, a strong voice to reveal deep vulnerabilities. In those first weeks before Covid became a noun, reading Thatcher and Wild proved cathartic, like lifting a leaded curtain.’  — Sophie Buchaillard talks about developing the Writers on Reading podcast with author Jonathan Macho, how poetry can be a real conversation between writer and reader about the emotional topics of our day, and about the future of Welsh poetry

 

'Two of Wales' most celebrated poets head to Swansea University's Singleton Campus on the 26th of this month for in-person readings and a Q&A at Taliesin Create.' Numbers are limited so please book now! http://bit.ly/patrickandsusie

Happy Boxing Day! Have a poem from Windfalls… l hope you are all having a splendid time x