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Seren News - August 2012
Patrick McGuinness wins Wales Book of the Year 2012
 | Patrick McGuinness has won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2012. After winning the Fiction category for his novel set in 1989 Bucharest, The Last Hundred Days , he was also proclaimed the overall winner of the three categories, fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The announcement was made at a ceremony held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff on Thursday 12th July. Patrick McGuinness is already a renowned poet and this, his debut novel, has achieved world-wide recognition, having reached both the Costa First Novel Award Shortlist and The Man Booker Prize Long-list in 2011. |
More News
 | Rhian Edwardss debut poetry collection Clueless Dogs has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection 2012. The winner will receive a 5,000 prize sponsored by Felix Dennis and Forward Arts Foundation. Rhian was delighted with the shortlisting Being shortlisted for the Forward Prize for First Collection is nothing short of a poetical dream come true, after all its the highest accolade for a first collection of poetry. A poet, musician and songwriter, Rhians poetry reflects her engagment with musical rhythm. In 2011 she won First Prize in the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, and was also awarded the Audience Prize for her performance. |
Rhian and Jacob Sam-La Rose, who have both been shortlisted for Best First Collection, were celebrated for bridging the gap between page and performance poetry. The Best First Collection shortlist also includes poets Loretta Collins Klobah, Lucy Hamilton and Sam Riviere.
Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru/National Eisteddfod of Wales 2012
If you are visiting the Eisteddfod, why not drop by our Stand (No: 1011) to meet some of our authors, have a chat with the Seren staff and check out the fantastic offers on a wide range of our books. We will be open from 9.30am every day for the whole week.
Authors appearing throughout the week are:
Saturday 4th August, 11am: Phil Cope presenting his fantastic collection of photographs of Holy Wells: Wales
Tuesday 7th August, 11am: Christopher Meredith signing copies of his fourth novel The Book of Idiots .
Wednesday 8th August, 11am: Fflur Dafydd signing copies of her Mabinogion novella The White Trail .
Friday 10th August, 2pm: Tony Bianchi will be signing copies of Daniel's Beetles , a translation of his prizewinning novel, Pryfeta .
Saturday 11th August, 11am: Grahame Davies signing copies of his first poetry collection in English, Lightning Beneath the Sea .
New Titles
 | The Mind-Body Problem by Katha Pollitt The British edition of the latest collection by the much-praised and widely published American poet and essayist Katha Pollitt, who brings a distinctive blend of wit and lyricism to a profusion of subjects. Ranging across jumble-sales, Jane Austen, Chinese poets, New York City in its crumbling glory, mothers in the playground and hermits in the desert, Pollitt gives a modern, paradoxical twist to philosophical and political conundrums. Poem Night Subway was Poem of the Week at the Guardian online (23rd -29th July) ISBN: 9781854115744 Paperback: 8.99 |
Forthcoming Titles
| | 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, few of these letters have been published before and 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
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 | Burying the Wren by Deryn Rees-Jones Poetry Book Society Recommendation (Autumn 2012) In her fourth poetry collection, 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
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| | Keidrych Rhys: The Van Pool by Charles Mundye 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
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| | Sean Tyrone: A Symphony of Horrors by Mark Ryan Sean O'Brien left his wife and son in County Tyrone to find work as a collier in the South Wales Valleys. Years later Niamh O'Brien is dying and sends her son Jack on a quest to find out what became of his father. Sean Tyrones last letter came from somewhere called Aberuffern. The brilliantly evoked valleys town of Aberuffern (the mouth of hell) becomes the central motif of this short novel, inspired by the Mexican novel Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. Sean Tyrone A Symphony of Horrors is based on a play of the same name by the late author, musician and playwright Mark Ryan and tells the story of Jack's odyssey from child to man and from inexperience to manhood. This is lively, blackly humorous and intelligent storytelling. The beautifully produced paperback includes a series of 20 woodcuts also created by Mark Ryan. ISBN: 9781854116475 Paperback 8.99 |
Meet the Author
Saturday 28th July - Friday 24th August, 12 - 5pm: Marking 56 Years: 56 Group Wales / Grp 56 Cymru. Exhibition opened by David Alston, Arts Director ACW. Bay Art, Cardiff.
Monday 6th - Saturday 11th August: Ty Newydd residential poetry course in North Wales. Tutors Pascale Petit andco-tutor 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
Mind-Body Problem
When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself
but for my body. It was so direct
and simple, so rational in its desires,
wanting to be touched the way an otter
loves water, the way a giraffe
wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling
the tender leaves at the tops of the trees. It seems
unfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer
because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled
with certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions
that made me tyrannize and patronize it
like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
English-professor husband ashamed of his wife
her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
and regional vowels. Perhaps
my body would have liked to make some of our dates,
to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl
with None of your business! perhaps
it would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.
If we had had a more democratic arrangement
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
and Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
instead of the current curious shift of power
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body as though by some
swift and powerful dog. How eagerly
it plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,
as though it knows exactly where we are going.
The Mind-Body Problem by Katha Pollit is out now 8.99
