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The 7th international Welsh Poetry Competition, 2013, was launched this week in Pontypridd, South Wales.
This annual competition has gone from strength to strength each year and is an essential part of the literary calendar.
Writer and competition organizer Dave Lewis said: The continued success of the competition shows there is a great hunger for honest appreciation of the spoken word. Many feel the competition is unique because it is truly independent, we do not use filter judges and all our entries are judged anonymously. So, whether you are an established writer or a complete beginner, everyone has the same chance of winning. This is vitally important because it allows exciting new talent to emerge.
This year the competition will be judged by Welsh writer and poet, Eloise Williams.
We are delighted that Eloise has agreed to judge this years competition. She is a fantastic writer of poetry, fiction and plays. She has been widely published and won several awards for her work. Born in Cardiff, Eloise grew up in Llantrisant and now lives in beautiful Tenby.
The competition has had six great years already and we have also published an anthology containing all the winning poems from the first five years so if anyone wants to see the standard of work before they enter they can buy a copy from the competition web site.
As always, we hope to discover previously unpublished voices alongside the more familiar literary names. We believe good poetry should be raw, passionate, and honest. Have you got what it takes?
Prizes are: 1st Prize - 400, 2nd Prize - 200 and 3rd Prize - 100, plus 17 runners-up will be published on our web site.
To enter you just need to compose a poem, in English, of less than 50 lines and send to the competition organizers. Entry forms are available by post, can be downloaded from the web site or picked up from local libraries. It is just 4 to enter and the closing date is Sunday 26th May 2013.
Competition Website - www.welshpoetry.co.uk
Competition Judge www.eloisewilliams.com
Contact Tel: Dave Lewis - 07890 888585
On St Dwynwen's day, only one photo would suffice......Llanddwyn Island ...... The name Llanddwyn means "The church of St. Dwynwen". Dwynwen is the Welsh patron saint of lovers.
Happy New Year!
Have you made any New Year resolutions? If, like us at Seren, those new resolutions havent quite gone to plan, lets all make one promise together: 'In 2013, we'll read good quality books!
And you dont have to look much further than the Seren forthcoming titles list . Seren fiction starts 2013 with a headlong dive into the tricky but hugely enjoyable world of the short story, with The Scattering - a scintillating first collection from acclaimed Irish author and playwright Jaki McCarrick (March) followed by All the Souls , a haunting collection of tales set in Wales and Brittany, from Aberystwyth author Mary-Ann Constantine (April). Watch out for a wonderful first novel from Francesca Rhydderch (May). Set in Hong Kong in the second World War and post war-West Wales, The Rice Paper Diaries is a story of war told from the edges, and the havoc it wreaks on individual lives.
Seren poetry titles for the first half of 2013 include: Marianne Burton's beautifully intelligent first collection, She Inserts the Key ; a second collection from London-based American poet Kathryn Maris, God Loves You , in which she pointedly subverts religious clich while borrowing formats and tones from scripture.
Other News
 | Congratulations to two Seren poets on their recent appointments. Judy Brown is the 2013 Poet in Residence for the Wordsworth Trust. Judy won the prestigious Manchester Poetry Prize and her first collection Loudness , was shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in 2011 and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. As well as her own work, Judy will be involved in the contemporary literature programme, running the monthly Dove Cottage Poets group, mentoring local poets and acting as a judge in the 2013 Michael Marks Awards. Judy will move into the Wordsworth Trust site in January and her first public appearance as Poet in Residence will be on 26th January, at the Arts and Book Festival. She will offer a Beginners Poetry Workshop and, later, read from her work. |
 | Also, poet Rhian Edwards was recently awarded the Writer in Residency position at Aberystwyth Arts Centre from March to June 2013. Her debut collection Clueless Dogs was shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection 2012. Rhian also won the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry 2011/12. |
Beyond the Pampas: In Search of Patagonia by Imogen Rhia Herrad is Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month (Jan 2013). Beyond the Pampas is an entrancing and highly unusual account of a journey to the ends of the earth in search of a dream. Imogen Herrad sets off in search of the descendents of the nineteenth century colony of Welsh settlers in Patagonia, in the deep south of Argentina, and discovers that Welsh-speaking communities, proud of their heritage, still exist there today. She also discovers a country and a way of life hugely different from her European experience.
You can order your copy from the Seren website now .
Tony Conran (1931-2013)
We were saddened to have the news of the death of Tony Conran, at the age of 81. Poet, translator, dramatist, teacher and literary commentator, much of Tony's fifty plus year career was spent at the centre, or perhaps the interface would be a better word, of English and Welsh language cultures. Though he was never afraid to ask the awkward question, or to follow a difficult argument, he was a generous teacher, collaborator and person. His translations from Welsh poetry stretching over a thousand years were landmarks, and testimony to his ability to empathise with writers and writing across centuries of differing experiences and conditions. Tony's own poetry was often demanding, sometimes almost mesmerising in its craft and conviction. He was able to take poetry to more places than most poets in the second half of the twentieth century, as those whose starting point was his truly memorable Elegy for the Welsh Dead, killed in the Falkland Islands would quickly discover. A distinctive writer and critic, his intelligent contribution to the literary life of Wales will be missed.
Forthcoming Titles
| Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After the Beatles (Ed) Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss and David Woolley 9.99 Pbk You know they caused a revolution - 50 years ago the Beatles transformed the face of music, youth, and popular culture. In January 1963 their single 'Please, Please Me' shot to number one, heralding the start of both Beatlemania and the swinging sixties. In the next few years the Beatles wrote the template for pop music. Their songs defined popular culture at a time when it was inspiring social change in Europe and North America, and this book collects poems that both respond to the music and to their influence on the way we lived then and the way we live now. Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world have listened to, and loved, the Beatles' music. Their impact on musicians, writers, film-makers and ordinary people has been simply, enormous. With contributions from a myriad of poets, young and old, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Adrian Henri, Philip Larkin, Lachlan Mackinnon, Roger McGough, Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Reed and Carol Rumens, this book is a response to the Beatles' creativity and capacity to influence successive generations. |
Meet the Author
Wednesday 23rd January 2013, 7pm: Rhian Edwards reading from her debut poetry collection Clueless Dogs at the Word 4 Word National Theatre of Wales, Clwb y Bont, 85a Taff Street, Town Centre, Pontypridd, CF37 4SL
Thursday 18th January 2013, 1pm: Art Lunchtime Talk with Tony Curtis, who will be discussing Jonah Jones and the image of writing at the National Museum of Wales.
Thursday 7th February 2013, 7.30pm: First Thursday literary evenings at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. We celebrate the release of the anthology Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After the Beatles . Editors Phil Bowen and David Woolley will read a select few poems. Also poets featured in the anthology will be reading, including Rhian Edwards.
Sunday 10th February 2013, 12-3.30pm: Self-Portrait with a Pen: themed writing workshop for Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour, Earls Court London.
We were sad to see Robin Grossmann, who was editorial assistant for Poetry Wales magazine, leave his post at the beginning of January. Robin is now working at University Wales Press, and we wish him all the best in his new role.
What are the Seren staff up to?
Penny has been trying and failing to avoid the sales. Still no Kindle, but print purchases of The Beloved by Toni Morrison and Midnight's Children , from Burway Books, an independent bookshop based in Church Stretton.
Victoria is detoxing from the festive period and has banned chocolate from the office. Shes also been visiting the Liberty Stadium to watch Swansea, and is eagerly awaiting the 2nd leg of the Capital One Cup game against Chelsea.
Simon has been listening to Beach House, Tame Impala, Grizzly Bear, The Flaming Lips and Do the Pop: Australian Garage-Rock 1976-87 (3 vols).
2013 has been full of new beginnings for Rebecca as she has taken up the role of Editorial Assistant at Robin's departure as well as continuing to work on subscriptions and marketing for Poetry Wales. She also took up the trapeze this month and hopes to fly by the end of the year! She is currently reading: Gossip from the Forest by Sara Maitland and Collages by Anais Nin.
Amy has dived headfirst into 2013, after flu-detour in the first week. Christmas gifts included 'pocket' leather edition of Poems from Keats and Shelley selected by Sidney Carleton Newsom: teacher of English in the manual training High School, Indianapolis, Indiana, and published by Macmillan, New York, 1923. New Year's Resolution: Carry Keats/Shelley for a week instead of ubiquitous digital devices, consult instead of 'twitter'.
Mick has had a sombre start to his reading in 2013, catching up with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Patrick Suskind's Perfume . Suggestions for jollier reading welcomed!
Clancy is currently listening to a lot of Welsh language rock/pop from the late 20th century whilst writing and researching her book on the Sin Roc Gymraeg (Welsh Rock Scene) to be published by Seren next year. She has just finished reading Luke Haines hilarious memoir Post Everything and is now revisiting The Great Gatsby and wishing she was at one of his fabulous parties instead of looking out of the window at the snow.
Poem of the Month
Thirteen in Sixty-Three
We were all thirteen in sixty-three.
Profumo and a Russian spy using the same Marylebone mews.
After Love Me Do came Please Please Me.
From Me to You soon to be MBE.
The man in the mask. Christine Keeler in the news.
We were all thirteen in sixty-three.
Staying up late with TW3.
Stephen Ward picking up the tab the Establishments dues.
After Love Me Do came Please Please Me.
Harold Wilsons white heat of technology.
Macmillan in the mud on the grousemoor in his trews.
We were all thirteen in sixty-three.
Jack Kennedys Promised Land across the sea
From an island full of noises; John Lennon had lit the fuse.
After Love Me Do came Please Please Me.
The Shrimps dress four inches above the knee!
One of the great train robbers on the boat to Santa Cruz.
We were all thirteen in sixty-three.
After Love Me Do came Please Please Me.
Phil Bowen
Taken from the forthcoming anthology Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After The Beatles
St Dwynwen's Day
St Dwynwen, the patron saint of friendship and love, is celebrated in Wales on 25th January.
Dwynwen was one of the prettiest daughters of the 5th-century King of Brycheiniog, Brychan Brycheiniog's 24 daughters. She was already betrothed when she fell in love with Prince Maelon Dafodrill from Gwynedd. Maelon became so annoyed that he forced himself upon Dwynwen, who fled into the woods and prayed that God would make her forget all about Maelon. Dwynwen then fell asleep and received a visit from an angel, who gave her a potion to make her forget Maelon, who had been turned into ice.
God then granted Dwynwen three wishes, to which, she asked for Maelon to be thawed, for God to give true lovers all their hopes and dreams and also that she would never marry. The three wishes were granted and Dwynwen dedicated the rest of her life to God. The remains of Dwynwen's church are still visible today on Llanddwyn Island off Anglesey, where there is also a well, allegedly containing a sacred fish, whose movements forecast the romantic future of visiting couples.
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On 25th January 2008, Tower Colliery officially closed.
Tower Colliery , situated in the Cynon valley, near Hirwaun, was the oldest working coal mine in the UK, dating back to 1808 when it was owned by the Crawshay family and called Goitre Colliery.
The colliery was originally closed by British Coal in 1994, as being unproductive, however, 239 of the redundant workforce, led by Tyrone O'Sullivan, the NUM Branch Secretary, used their redundancy money to buy back the colliery and against expectations, this venture was a success. Â
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On 25th January 1327, Â King Edward II of England was forced to abdicate, with Wales playing an important part in his downfall.Â
In November 1326, Edward, along with his close friend and probable lover, Hugh Despenser the Younger were captured by the forces of his wife, Queen Isabella, whilst making their way from Neath Abbey to Caerphilly Castle.Â
Edward, who was born in  Caernarfon Castle, had succeeded his father Edward I in 1307 and the following year, he married Isabella of France.  He had become generally unpopular following the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and his constant quarreling with his barons.
Also, his close friendship with the much hated Hugh Despenser the Younger had damaged his relationship with Isabella, who fled to France and then returned with an army, led by her ally  Roger de Mortimer, to overthrow Edward.  Isabella's army marched on London and when Edward realised the support she had, he fled to the security of Caerphilly Castle, with Despenser.Â
Then the news came through that  Isabella's forces had taken Bristol Castle, which was held by Despensers father, Hugh Despenser the elder, who had been executed.  Edward and Despenser, apparently panicked and left Caerphilly for Neath Abbey, from where they attempted to negotiate for peace with Isabella.
However, when they were unable to reach an agreement with Isabella, Edward and Despenser, attempted to return to Caerphilly, but were intercepted and detained at Llantrisant Castle.
The king was deposed and sent to Berkeley Castle, with his son, Edward III, Â proclaimed king on 25 January 1327. Â Despenser was tried and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, with his head subsequently placed on top of London Bridge. Â There were unsuccessful attempts to rescue, but in September 1327, it was announced that he too was dead. Â
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Welsh Love Spoons.Â
Traditionally, lovespoons were decoratively carved spoons presented by young men to their loved one as a token of affection. Â They were usually made from a single piece of sycamore or poplar, using a small pocket knife to carve romantic symbols into the spoon, such as hearts representing passion, balls within cages representing the number of children desired by the couple, chain links representing loyalty and faithfulness, keys and keyholes representing security or the key to one's heart and wheels representing the carver's intention to work hard and provide for his loved one. Â
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Welsh Courting Customs.Â
*  Rhamanta -  was a way of trying to foretell the future.  In Glamorgan  for example, a young couple would place two grains of wheat on a shovel, which was placed over a fire.  If, when the shovel was hot enough and the grains jumped off together, it signified that the couple would marry, however if they jumped off separately, it was likely that the couple would separate.
* Â Mutton-Â In Pembrokeshire, a girl was said to dream about a future lover if a shoulder of mutton, pierced by nine holes was placed under her pillow, her shoes arranged in a T pattern and a rhyme spoken above her.
*  The custom of jumping the broomstick  originated with newly married Romany couples as a fertility rite.Â
* The throwing of confetti at married couples as they left the church developed from the ritual of throwing grain to ensure a fruitful union.
* Â Welsh brides also believed that if their wedding dress was torn on the wedding day that it denoted a happy marriage.
January
25 th St. Dwynwens Day commemorates the Welsh patron saint of love & friendship
Start the New Year by promoting a healthier lifestyle and exercise to improve your health and wellbeing see our intranet Everyone Matters Calendar 2013, Intranet for Gym Membership and Cycle Schemes
31 st National Bug Busting Day
http://www.whathealth.com/organizations/c/comhygieneconcern-uk.html 
Jack Lightfoot Goes Wild by KJ Revell Price: $1.99 USD. 37500 words. Published on January 20, 2013. Fiction. The world on which we depend is coming to an end due to our uncontrolled over consumption of natural resources and excessive waste which pollutes the environment that permits our very existence. Jack Lightfoot finds he is able to alternate between his life as a suburban child and that of a variety of wild animals with which he is able to communicate to find the danger humanity is in
What does it mean when the weather presenter on the telly says it's -40 degrees Celsius and weatherman on the television says it's -40 degrees Fahrenheit? Obviously, it means that it's...COLD! But for viewers on both sides of the "pond" it also means the temperature is the same!
The Fahrenheitand Celsius scales come together at: -40 degrees below "0" zero.
I've personally witnessed the convergence of the two scales. In fact, the coldest temperature I've ever experienced, first hand, was -58 degrees F (-50 degrees Celsius)! I was just outside Laramie, Wyoming. It was unbelievably cold! Add a howling north wind to that subzero temperature and the official chill index plunged to -125 degrees F. How anything can survive unsheltered in those temperatures is beyond my comprehension. Yet wildlife and farm animals do. You can even mark the direction of the wind by looking out over the landscape at the herds of antelope and cattle. They both do the same thing. They turn their rumps windward then bury their faces in the snow. You don't need a "windsock" to tell which way the wind is coming from, just look at the direction the livestock are pointing there nether parts. Apparently their noses and eyes are the most vulnerable in subzero temperatures and by keeping their faces and heads buried in the snow they can maintain a temperature of 32 degrees F or 0 degrees Celsius for those delicate parts of their body. And you thought that you werelooking forward to Spring! These Arctic blasts can last for days so the next time you snuggle up against the fireplace with a warm cuppa in your hands, remember how miserable and how bored these poor creatures must be!
FAHRENHEIT and CELSIUS
Zero "0" degrees on the Fahrenheit scale (-17.77 Celsius)is arrived at by mixing equal parts of water, ice and salt. Remember how quickly that hand cranked, ice cream churn froze Mamgu's favorite recipe even on the hottest day in August? The mixture of ice, water and salt keeps the temperature in the churn at 0 degrees F (-17.77 Celsius).
100 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale was arrived at by measuringthe "body temperature" of a healthy man (now known to be 98.6 degrees F but close enough back in the day).
The method above is how Welshman, PresidentThomas Jefferson, instructed Welshman, Meriwether Lewis, to calibrate his thermometer for journal entries of the temperature during the journeys of the Corps of Discovery. When a graduated scale of 100 equal parts is marked between those to benchmarks, water will freeze at 32 degrees, and when extended beyond, water will boil at 212 degrees at sea level on the Fahrenheit scale.
Stephen Fry jokes that the British have the best of both worlds. In the winter,he says, they always cite the temperature in Celsius because it sounds so much colder and in the summer they cite the temperature in Fahrenheit because it sounds so much hotter. Unless, of course, you're DCI Jack Frost, who is/was by no means a reactionary, but not aboveasking his associates to explain what kilometers and temperatures in Celsius mean in "real numbers."
I don't why the two scales meet at -40 degrees--but they do. It's the one temperature where no "F" or "C" is needed. As a fan ofDouglas Adams I would have preferred they converge at 42 or at least -42. But at my age, I have learned that we don't get everything we wish for. So I decided to google -40 and was abruptly told that no documents matched my request. On the positive side, when I googled plain old 40 the giant search engine trumpeted " About 12,720,000,000 results
Why is 40 so popular and -40 so out of fashion? Wikepedia explains it all, I guess, when it says "4 0(forty) is the natural number following 39 and preceding 41. Despite being related to the word 'four' (4),40 is spelled 'forty', and not 'fourty' " I should have known (smacking myself in the forehead)!
So why waste so much time on this drivel? Because someday, somewhere, someone else (besides me) is going to google -40. And, when that day eventually happens everyone, everywhere will know that at least ONE document exists giving due credit to this amazing spot on the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales! The place where the United States of America and all of Europe finally see eye-to-eye! And those future google-ees will take note that least one place--AmeriCymru--took time to ponder these things. Chock it up to Welsh curiosity! Or, if you don't want to share the blame--to this Welshman's curiosity.
Postscript: I suppose when celebrating this amazing "point of agreement" between the continents it's only natural to expect that some muckety-muck somewhere would attempt to cloud the waters even further! And what better place than the House of Lords! That someone is/was Belfast born and self-proclaimed Baron Kelvin of Largs but known to his mates on the school playground as "Billy Thomson." Billy, with one of his muckety-muck colleagues at Glasgow University, decided to start their own scales henceforth known as Kelvin and Rankine. In a universe of relativity they demanded absolutes zeros. As you might expect there's more to this adventure but this is absolutely not the place nor time to bore you further.
Christmas has come and gone--and none to soon for livestock in Wyoming--but this song in the fascinating A Capella format seems fitting:
