Good News

We are busy preparing for the National Eisteddfod 2012. Seren will have a stand on the Maes at which you can browse and buy - look out for special offers! You can also meet authors, have books signed and talk to Seren staff about our work, and yours. Keep an eye on the Seren website and events page for more information.

The Eisteddfod Maes is at The Old Airfield, Llandow, Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan. The Eisteddfod runs from Saturday 4th August until Saturday 11th August 2012 we hope to see you there!

Two Seren titles have been shortlisted for the dlr Strong Award 2012 . Eoghan Walls The Salt Harvest and Nerys Williams Sound Archive are on the shortlist along side two other poets. The Strong Award is part of Poetry Now at Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival and serves to recognise the promise and achievement of both English and Irish language poets.

All shortlisted nominees will read at the Strong Reading during the Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival 2012 and the prize-winner will be awarded 1,000.

The dlr Strong Award in partnership with Shine is awarded in memory of Rupert and Eithne Strong.

More news

The Wales Book of the Year 2012 winner will be announced next Thursday, 12th July at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff at 7pm.

Seren have two books on the Best Fiction shortlist, The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness and The Keys of Babylon by Robert Minhinnick, and we wish them well. To buy tickets, contact Literature Wales: 029 2047 2266 / post@literaturewales.org

New titles - Out Now

Lightning Beneath the Sea by Grahame Davies Already well-known for his prizewinning Welsh-language poetry and fiction, and for his scholarly non-fiction, Grahame Davies has now produced his first collection of poems in English. Using a native warmth and an intimate, conversational tone, his poems are as concerned with character and relationships as they are with wider cultural matters. 'Departed', a poem from this collection will be the Guardian 'Poem of the Week' starting from Monday 9th July. ISBN: 9781854115751 Paperback 8.99

Big Low Tide by Candy Neubert A small island stands in the channel, barely changed by the tides. On its surface, the islanders go about their daily lives aware that its not possible to make a move undetected here, where everyone knows everybody else; where the neighbours will always notice, and judge. They know this, but they may have forgotten that its always possible to leave. ISBN: 9781854115836 Paperback: 8.99

Forthcoming Titles

Burying the Wren by Deryn Rees-Jones Poetry Book Society Recommendation In her fourth poetry collection from Seren, Deryn Rees-Jones returns to familiar preoccupations but with a new clarity and maturity of vision. Intensely lyrical and elegiac, these poems focus on hymns to small things to set against a grave loss, that of her late husband, the poet and critic Michael Murphy. Above all these are poems of the body, ...the blue heartstopping pulse at the wrist, which are alive to the world and the transformative qualities of love. ISBN: 978185411576 Paperback: 8.99

Keidrych Rhys The Van Pool: Collected Poems by Charles Mundye (ed) Keidrych Rhys was one of the most influential writers in Wales in the 40s and 50s who counted Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones, Vernon Watkins, Emyr Humphreys, Alun Lewis, RS Thomas and many others among his circle of friends and literary acquaintances.This book brings together The Van Pool (Faber, 1942), Rhyss only poetry collection and a wide variety of uncollected and unpublished poetry and translations. ISBN: 9781854115829 Paperback: 12.99

The Mind/Body Problem by Katha Pollitt The British edition of a prize-winning book of poetry by the renowned American poet and essayist, Katha Pollitt. Informed by a sensibility both keenly political and artfully subversive, she touches on such subjects as Lives of the 19th Century Poetesses, Collectibles and The Night Subway. The middle section of the book is devoted to revisionist tales from the Bible where female characters like Martha and Lots Wife get the last word, followed by pieces that hinge on philosophical questions that evoke paradox, like the title poem and Happiness Writes White. ISBN: 9781854115744 Paperback: 8.99

Poet to Poet: Edward Thomass Letters to Walter de la Mare by Judy Kendell (ed) This collection of letters from Edward Thomas to Walter de la Mare amounts to over three hundred, running from 1906 to 1917. Inspiring and poignant, they give a moving account of the growing trust between these two poets; including some fascinating biographical detail and insights into their composing practices, their close and changing friendship and their special influence on each other. ISBN: 9781854115805 Paperback: 14.99

Forthcoming Events

Friday 6th July 11am: Radio 4. Paul Henry presents 'Excusing Private Godfrey' celebrating the life of playwright, actor and Somme survivor Arnold Ridley.

Saturday 7th July 7.30pm: Poetry on the Border offers an evening of rare musicality and compelling power, when the extraordinary Ian Duhig, master of high seriousness and low clowning - meets Paul Henry. Newport's most musical son and favourite poet at The Drill Hall, Lower Church Street, Chepstow NP 16 5HJ. Further details: www.poetryontheborder.org

Saturday 14th July - Sunday 15th July: Rhian Edwards reads from Clueless Dogs in the Poetry Tent at The Latitude Festival. 3.40pm (Sat) and 4.40pm (Sun). Check the Latitude Festival website for more details.

Monday 16th July 2pm: 'Winning Words' Tony Curtis will be holding a poetry workshop at The Hours book shop in Brecon. A chance for budding and established writers to work along side one of Wales most foremost writers (Fee 5)

Monday 16th July 7pm: 'Winning Words' - Poetry Reading. Tony Curtis will be joined by the Poet, Novelist, Editor and Literary Critic Grahame Davies for a reading of their work. Grahame has recently released his first collection of poetry in English, Lightning Beneath the Sea with Seren.

Thursday 19th July 7pm: Rhian Edwards is reading from her poetry collection Clueless Dogs at The Imp in Merthyr Tydfil. The Imperial Hotel, High Street, Merthyr Tydfil.

Friday 20th July 6.30pm : Grahame Davies launches his first collection of poetry in English, Lightning Beneath the Sea , at Waterstones Cardiff (The Hayes).

Friday 20th July 7.30pm: Rhian Edwards reads from Clueless Dogs at The Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl. See the Grand Pavilion website for more details.

Tuesday 24th July 6.45pm: Seren poet Judy Brown (Loudness) will be reading with Ruth Padel as part of the Wordsworth Trust Poetry Season 2012. At St Oswalds Church in Grasmere.

Monday 30th July - Saturday 4th August : Ty Newydd writers centre Starting and Restarting to Write with Paul Henry and Sian Melangell Dafydd. A poetry and prose course for adults which welcomes those who are new to writing and also those wishing to re-embark on previously abandoned forays into poetry and/or prose. Bookings/Details via: www.tynewydd.org

Wednesday 1st August 7.30 pm: Tokens for the Foundlings event, readers to be confirmed. Board Room, Barry Docks Offices.

Monday 6th Saturday 11th August : Ty Newydd residential poetry course in North Wales. Tutors Pascale Petit and Daljit Nagra, guest reader Karen McCarthy Woolf. Ty Newydd, Llanystumdwy, Cricieth, Gwynedd LL52 0LW To book phone 01766 522811 or email: tynewydd@literaturewales.org

Poem of the Month

The Hunt
New Bedford, Massachusetts

They still go out from here, the fishermen,
although you have to search these days to find
their rust-stained craft among the pleasure-yachts,
the pristine, white vacation voyagers.
They go with gasoline, of course, not sail,
not stars and sextants now, but satellites,
yet still the circling stormfronts when they stray
and still the waves cold welcome when they fall.
That much has stayed the same since Melvilles day:
out on Acushnet from New Bedford port,
back two years older, and a whaling man,
scarred, crown to sole, like Ahab, by the hunt,
ashore again, but not on solid ground.
Because its always there, the enemy,
the one you would give everything to kill,
the one you cannot bear to live without,
greater than you are, guessed at, never grasped,
something with teeth, your lances in its side,
hidden in darkness, whiter than the snow,
silver in shadow, lightning in the sea.

From Grahame Davies's new poetry collection Lightning Beneath the Sea 8.99