Wildlife

  So #LetThemEatTurnips … A poem from my first collection Better Houses.

  Lovely to be on this list… Parthian are thrilled to be one of the Wales finalists in the Nibbies Small Publisher of the Year Award! Sponsored by CPI Books, the award aims to celebrate the independent presses delivering "diverse, innovative and risk-taking publishing". Our co-founder Gillian Griffiths had this to say: "We are delighted to make the country finalists for 2023 in what is our thirtieth year of publishing." An exhibition and retrospective of our books and art associated with some of the key covers is currently running at The Coach House in the grounds of St Dogmaels Abbey, curated by Gillian Griffiths. https://www.thebookseller.com/news/small-press-of-the-year-finalists-praised-for-exceptional-sales-and-profit-growth

I'm looking forward to reading with some splendid poets in Penarth next month: PEN Cymru Poetry Event with Menna Elfyn , Susie Wild , Philip Gross , Mab Jones & Luca Paci Sun 26th February 2023. 2-4pm, Turner House, Penarth as part of Luca Paci and Chris Glynn's Self Help exhibition. Menna Elfyn will be joined by Susie Wild and local poets Philip Gross, Mab Jones and Luca Paci to explore self-help, islands, and collaboration. Menna Elfyn is an award winning poet and playwright from Wales who writes in Welsh but whose work has been translated into over eighteen languages. She is also the chair of PEN Cymru. PEN promotes literature and defends freedom of expression across the globe. Penarth neighbours: Illustrator Chris Glynn and poet Luca Paci unpack their touring exhibition of texts and images, book hacks and music, to explore creative collaboration, friendship, and the idea of self-help. The event centres around characters shipwrecked on the imaginary Self-Help Island.

 I'm really looking forward to releasing these three beauties in April 2023! Available to pre-order from Parthian now. Review copies available...

' reading through this anthology has been an immensely enjoyable, stimulating experience.' Tempo, Excursions in 21st-Century Italian Poetry  reviewed by Caroline Maldonado 'The title of this collection indicates that it makes no claims to be a revised canon of contemporary Italian poetry.  ‘Excursions’ suggests a more leisurely amble, a more personal and democratic approach. The Italian editor, Luca Paci, who has lived and worked in the UK for over 20 years sets out his principles and intentions in the introduction: Poetry is an essential tool to understand and question at a deeper level events, feelings and attitudes of present and past, recognising the complexity of reality in a radically different way. 'He highlights the diversity of Italian poetry in linguistic practice, form and origin. These are poems that criticise the language of power and reach for the people at the margin of the new global economy (women, the disabled, transgender people, migrants) and explore...

I was so sad to hear that we had lost the poet Norman Schwenk this week. Norman was a wonderful encourager of my writing when I was starting out and a bright spark of a poet and educator. I enjoyed working with him over the years, including bringing out his last book with Parthian in 2016,  Love What is Mortal: Selected Poems . Norman was Parthian Publisher Director Richard Davies' PhD supervisor, and he pays a moving tribute to him in Wales Arts Review : Where Have All the Good Guys Gone? A Tribute to Norman Schwenk

  Welcome 2023. I went to the sea and saw a sea horse.

It was so lovely to end the year with the news that Wales Arts Review named Pearl and Bone , the second poetry collection from Mari Ellis Dunning as Best Welsh Poetry Book 2022  and to have another of our titles, the debut Strange Animals by Emily Vanderploeg on the shortlist .  Clearly, I think all our 2022 poetry books, poets and editors are wonderful or I wouldn't have picked them, if you've had a backlog of great books to read, it did feel like 2022 was a bumper year for releases, then why not catch up with our 2022 list: The language of bees – Rae Howells Tempo: Excursions in 21st Century Italian Poetry edited by Luca Paci (bilingual Italian/English hardback) Pearl and Bone – Mari Ellis Dunning Strange Animals – Emily Vanderploeg All available from Parthian Books and your favourite bookshops on and offline. You can also catch Mari offering her writing tip as part of Jo Bell's Writers Advent for Day 18 .  I was also pleased to see another book I worked on at P...

There's a lovely review of Windfalls in the new issue of Poetry Wales ...  ‘Windfalls, Wild’s second collection, delivers another deft, witty, and heartwarming series of poems… Wild writes of overgrowth, decay, and the curious beauty and distraction of these things, as a neighbour’s overgrown fruit tree bombards the speaker's garden… This contrast between the fascination of the untamed and the mundane – bills, meals, old relationships – is a golden thread that passes through the poems within Windfalls.’ – George Sandifer-Smith Get your hands on a copy from the Poetry Wales website Submissions are also open until the end of the month, so send some poems in if they fit the theme!

  A thanksgiving meeting of editors! ☔ I am so glad I braved all the weather for a gorgeous catch up with these two poets, stars and editors while Zoë is over from the States...  and I received my first festive gift of the year. A lovely time had by all!🎄 ID: Zoë and Peter on one side of a restaurant table, Rhian and Susie on the other.

I had a wonderful time in Tenby this week, where the weather was less storm, more showers and double rainbows. This allowed me to stroll along the shore some of the time without being blown away, to explore the fort, and to do some research and scribbling with a wild-mood-swings sea view. As well as launching Celine's Soho Salon anthology by reading some poems at Tenby museum.  You'll find a few more photos on Instagram, but this one is a favourite from my mini-creative-getaway!

In this brand new interview episode , poets George Sandifer-Smith and Mari Ellis Dunning join Sophie and Jonathan to discuss their latest collections, Empty Trains (Broken Sleep) and Night Travel at the Right Speed (Infinity Books) from George, and Pearl and Bone (Parthian) from Mari, and how they were able to process their lockdown experiences through their work. As Mari's editor, I have worked on both her full collections with Parthian, so I recommend you listen for wonderful readings from Pearl and Bone and also for George who talks about not one but two poetry books that he has recently released.  George was also very kind, giving Windfalls a shout out. He's recently reread the collection in his capacity as the new Reviews Editor at Poetry Wales and a piece about it will appear in the new winter issue. He said: ‘Also, recent things that I’ve read that I loved ...  Windfalls was just spectacular, so musical in its use of free verse, and so much colour in it, such a wond...

  … and my last gig of the year (probably)! Come along to Storyville Books in Pontypridd on the 30th for the next instalment of Voices on the Bridge where I’ll be reading with other great people and there will also be wonderful music from Ben.

 

 Thanks to Tracey Rhys for these two lovely photos from The Swansea Fringe where I was hosting an event with Emily Cotterill and Mari Ellis Dunning on Sunday at COPR Bar, and I also read a few poems... Thanks also to all who braved the weather and came along and to Joe and the rest of the festival team and to Lee at COPR Bar for having us! Here are some of my favourites who stayed for a catch up after... Also, the weather meant my hair was firmly under a hat / in plaits for most of the weekend, but it did start out looking nice... so as I photographed this rare good hair day... here's evidence! I'm a right curlylocks again at the moment... which means it is rare they tame themselves nicely...

If you missed Celine's radio show, giving a sneak preview of this Thursday's Tenby launch of the new Celine's Soho Salon anthology, you can listen again here  ... my two poems are about 18 mins in.

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...