{"title":"Seren","description":"\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eSeren is a dynamic independent publisher of award-winning poetry, fiction, translation, biography, art history, history and current affairs titles. For the last thirty years Seren has aimed to publish the best quality and most thought-provoking writing on offer, in well designed, well produced books. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the heart of the Seren list is a good story told well, or an idea or history presented interestingly and provocatively. Many of Seren’s books and authors are shortlisted for – and win! – major literary prizes across Britain and America, including the Costa, Forward, T.S. Eliot, Glen Dimplex and Ondaatje Prizes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeren also publishes \u003cem\u003ePoetry Wales\u003c\/em\u003e magazine and maintains strong links with writing from Wales, as showcased in the popular \u003cem\u003eNew Stories from the Mabinogion\u003c\/em\u003e series. Prominent Seren authors include Dannie Abse, Sheenagh Pugh, Owen Sheers, Gwyneth Lewis, Niall Griffiths, Pascale Petit and Kathryn Simmonds. And although its roots remain firmly in Wales – ‘seren’ means ‘star’ in Welsh – both its authorship and readership are international in scope, proving that writers from a small country with an intricate culture have a truly worldwide relevance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWho's on your team? \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eSerena's team is small and enthusiastic. Mick Felton is the publisher and Managing Director, Amy Wack is the esteemed poetry editor (having joined Seren in the early '90s), Simon Hicks handles Sales whilst Jamie Hill creates our stunning book covers. Rosie Johns handles our marketing and publicity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eWe couldn't describe the team, however, without a mention of Mojo - the office dog! \u003cspan\u003eOffice Dog Mojo works Monday-Friday, though we use the term ‘works’ loosely.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/files\/mojojojo_medium.png?v=1532601791\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat events do you get involved with? \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eWe put on regular book launches and bookshop readings, and have strong connections with independent bookshops throughout Wales and the UK. In February 2018 Seren launched the first Cardiff Poetry Festival, in partnership with Cornerstone Cardiff, which will return for 2019.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat do you enjoy the most about publishing?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eWe love excellent writing and are dedicated to bringing our authors’ visions to life – discovering literary gems is our passion.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat’s your nearest bookshop? \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003eWH Smith Bridgend is the closest bookseller to our office – nearby in Cardiff we visit wonderful indies like the Wellfield Bookshop and Octavo’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ctable style=\"width: 472px; height: 100px;\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\"\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSeren Books\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e57 Nolton Street\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBridgend\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCF31 3AE\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e \u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTel: +44 (0)1656 663018\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehttp:\/\/www.serenbooks.com\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/tbody\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"storm","title":"Storm","description":"\u003cp\u003eJosephine is already haunted. At university in Aberystwyth, she is grateful to be away from home, and further everyday from the past. When she kisses Glynn on a night out, it could be the start of a love story. Awkward, earnest and polite, he isn’t like the other people she knows. But the town is in the midst of a violent storm and strange things keep happening. Josephine wishes it would all go away. But the past is intent on coming for her.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":54759769637249,"sku":"9781911752059","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/files\/jpg_rgb_1500h_82d1ab3d-a4d5-4361-b13b-dc8a3c330da6.jpg?v=1758105501"},{"product_id":"jonah-jones-an-artists-life","title":"Jonah Jones: An Artist's Life","description":"Sculptor, painter, letter cutter, stained glass artist, novelist, and academic, Jonah Jones (1919-2004) was a twentieth-century renaissance man whose life is captured in this biography by his son Peter, with a foreword by his friend Jan Morris.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn near Newcastle into a family of miners, Jonah Jones first found his passion for art during the Second World War while serving with a number of other artists and craftsmen in the non-combatant Medical Corps. After the War, he fulfilled his dream of settling in Wales and began his ‘on the job’ education as a sculptor and letter cutter. Much of his early work was at Clough Williams-Ellis’s Portmeirion village. The two became close friends and Jones widened his circle to include Richard Hughes, Bertrand Russell, John Cowper Powys and Huw Weldon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a varied career Jonah Jones produced intimate sculptures, monumental installations, and beautiful inscriptions, in addition to writing several novels, a biography of Clough Williams-Ellis and a well-regarded survey of the lakes of north Wales. His was a productive life which spanned much of the twentieth century, a century of ‘isms’ (including pacifism and Catholicism) which marked his character and work.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThis book is a remarkable portrait of both an artist and of art in the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"... proud, humorous, affable, patriotically Welsh, and deeply committed to his humanitarian ideals and a belief in the transforming power of art...\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Jones\u003c\/b\u003e is the son of Jonah Jones and worked with him in his studio for a number of years; latterly he was a journalist for BBC Monitoring.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040984840,"sku":"9781854115560","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_89e7f841-c276-482c-851c-e6a437aaea22.jpeg?v=1752238154"},{"product_id":"batu-angas-envisioning-nature-with-alfred-russel-wallace","title":"Batu-Angas: Envisioning Nature with Alfred Russel Wallace","description":"Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), one of the most famous scientists of the 19th century and best known today as the co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution, is the inspiration for this beautiful sequence of poems by Anne Cluysenaar. The title (meaning 'burnt rocks or cooled lava') is derived from the language spoken on the volcanic island of Ternate, in the Malay Archipelago, where Wallace experienced that 'flash' of inspiration which brought together his observations as a naturalist, leading him to describe his theory in a letter to Charles Darwin which encouraged Darwin to publish \u003ci\u003eThe Origin of Species\u003c\/i\u003e. 2008 is the 150th anniversary of the discovery of natural selection by Wallace and Darwin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA field trip that passed by Wallace's birthplace near Usk on the Wales\/England border triggered the author’s research into the scientist’s journeys through the Amazonian rainforests and the jungles of the Malay Archipelago as well as the lush landscapes surrounding the river Usk, which he explored as a child and young man. Tracing Wallace's travels, the poet becomes aware of echoes and tensions between his responses and her own. Orchids, orang-utans, rare beetles, butterflies and birds of paradise, collected by Wallace and preserved in British collections, are sought out and intensely re-experienced.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book opens with an introduction by Wallace expert Charles Smith, of the University of Kentucky, and a Foreword by the poet. The poems are accompanied by a rich selection of images: some that Wallace chose to illustrate his travels, including a sketch by Wallace himself, together with photographs of Wallace specimens and of living animals and plants. Also included are photographs of Wallace and of his birthplace on the banks of the river Usk in Wales.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Batu-Angas is an engaging, if not unfamiliar, literary meditation on humanity’s position within the evolving natural world. It is also, however, a text that inhabits and explores the interstices between poetry and science.\"  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePlanet\u003c\/i\u003e, May 2009\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Cluysenaar's delicate and graceful poems (framed with quotations from Wallace and images of the animals and plants he collected) deftly explore the channels that Wallace's journeys opened up.  Cluysenaar's work articulates the tension between the slow evolution of a species and the scope and value of a single life…\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, October 2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnne Cluysenaar\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Belgium, the daughter of the Belgian-Scottish artist John Cluysenaar and his wife, the painter Sybil Fitzgerald Hewat. The family moved to Britain just before the outbreak of World War II and by the age of seven, Anne was committed to writing poetry. She has lectured in literature, linguistics and creative writing at (amongst other places) the universities of Manchester, Dublin, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Birmingham and Cardiff. She has been published widely in magazines and anthologies, founded two literary journals: \u003ci\u003eSheaf\u003c\/i\u003e (still going) and \u003ci\u003eScintilla\u003c\/i\u003e (published by the Usk Valley Vaughan Association).Amongst her titles are: as an editor, \u003ci\u003eThe Selected Poems of Henry Vaughan\u003c\/i\u003e, and as a poet, \u003ci\u003eTimeslips: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e (Carcanet, 1997). She has lived in Wales for the last twenty years, running a smallholding near Usk. \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040985544,"sku":"9781854114648","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_9069a69b-9c8e-48b0-9b4d-307eae1c3b7a.jpeg?v=1752237376"},{"product_id":"in-a-different-light-fourteen-contemporary-dutch-poets","title":"In a Different Light: Fourteen Contemporary Dutch Poets","description":"In response to \u003ci\u003eIn een ander licht\u003c\/i\u003e, the Dutch anthology of poems, from Wales comes \u003ci\u003eIn a Different Light\u003c\/i\u003e, a ground-breaking collection of work by fourteen contemporary Dutch poets who have made continental reputations but who wait to be discovered in the English language. And there are fascinating, rewarding discoveries to be made by the English-speaking reader.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere is a poetry surprisingly unmoved by great events (world wars) and politics or by nature (perhaps not so surprisingly from a country engineered to prevent inundation by the sea). Instead for many poets language has become material, like paint for an artist; for the poets in this anthology, at least, the tone is often conversational. Their subjects are the 'big ones': death, doubt, stillness, alienation, minute alterations of perspective. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot surprisingly as residents and products of a small country situated on the delta of a great European river, Dutch poets are concerned with their role as inhabitants of a continent. In many ways the differences between Dutch, Welsh and English poetry could not be more pronounced, and it is their 'different light' which makes this anthology so intriguing and enjoyable for readers in Britain.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040993480,"sku":"9781854113139","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_626cdad1-ff0d-42ff-92bd-319d11194336.jpeg?v=1752237517"},{"product_id":"a-kind-of-memory","title":"A Kind of Memory","description":"\u003ci\u003eA Kind of Memory\u003c\/i\u003e is Eleanor Cooke's first collection of poems. The moving family poems it contains extend from the domestic into an exploration of the nature of poetry itself, and the making of fictions. A perceptive questioning of the process of creativity underlies the poet's delicacy of language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEleanor Cooke\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Yorkshire but lives now in the Welsh border country, where she is a lecturer in Creative Writing. ","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53675021599105,"sku":"9780907476870","price":2.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_27c770d8-df3b-4196-8823-b247cecc1907.jpeg?v=1752236406"},{"product_id":"leslie-norris-the-complete-poems","title":"Leslie Norris: The Complete Poems","description":"This landmark publication of more than 300 poems reflects the sixty plus year publishing life of the late Leslie Norris, who died in 2007, aged 86. Norris was best known as a nature poet and elegist of passion and rare expression. Lyrical and individual, to his closely observed poems, each word weighted and in its correct place, Norris introduces a strong metaphysical element which makes the poems, as Edward Lucie-Smith noted, \"much larger than the sum of their parts\".\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArranged chronologically, and including poems never before published, the reader follows the developments of subject and style from an early enthrallment with Dylan Thomas, through the mediation of Edward Thomas and Robert Frost, to the percolation of American styles which spending the last twenty years of his life in Utah inevitably brought. Norris paints a vivid world full of striking descriptive detail and extraordinarily realised people. Whether it is his native south Wales, the southern England of his early working life, or the majesty of the American west, Norris is fully engaged with his surroundings and their import.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo this core of work \u003ci\u003eThe Complete Poems\u003c\/i\u003e adds his renderings of Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, and poems for children to produce the full range of this marvellous writer and his enduring work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLeslie Norris\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, in 1921. Formerly a teacher and headmaster, he taught literature and creative writing for many years at a variety of American universities, most recently Brigham Young, where he was Christiansen Professor of Poetry. In addition to his many poetry collections he published two much admired volumes of short stories and three books for children. In the US he was published by Little, Brown and Farrar, Straus \u0026amp; Giroux.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMeic Stephens\u003c\/b\u003e is the editor of numerous anthologies and works of reference including \u003ci\u003eThe Companion to Welsh Literature\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040994692,"sku":"9781854114679","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_e0da06ff-0a6d-4dec-9209-4d58e1b933a2.jpeg?v=1752238211"},{"product_id":"the-marching-bands","title":"The Marching Bands","description":"Significant events of the twentieth century, be they public and tragic or private and joyful, have inspired Desmond Graham to write this moving collection. The book features a number of elegies to the great poets of both world wars, including Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney and Keith Douglas. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese poems are evocative of the terrible atmosphere of wartime. Also here are speculative biographical pieces on painters and their families. An 'Old Turner' rows 'toothless towards Battersea', Monet surveys the famous water-lilies, and Rembrandt's son Titus, reputedly 'also a painter' - but none of whose work survives - captures on canvas his own short life. The final section of the book is a group of charming poems chronicling the birth and first years of the life of the poet's daughter, Milena.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It is difficult not to be entertained. Style is as colourful as subject matter as Graham plays with language and form, selecting the ripest of each.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoetry Wales\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Desmond Graham's poetry is permeated by allusions to our shared culture - music, song, dance, painting, film, all the arts of the civilized European living...\"\u003cbr\u003eJill Farringdon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDesmond Graham\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Surrey and educated at Leeds University. He has lectured at Universities in Africa, Germany and, since 1971, at Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of a biography of Keith Douglas and the editor of his poems and prose. He is also the editor of an anthology, \u003ci\u003ePoetry of the Second World War\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53675021533569,"sku":"9781854111586","price":5.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_1abd6e30-f5a4-45a0-b35e-1822be4ae99a.jpeg?v=1752236592"},{"product_id":"sound-archive","title":"Sound Archive","description":"\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the 2011 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSound Archive\u003c\/i\u003e is an innovative display of modernist techniques by Welsh poet Nerys Williams. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs we learn from her title poem, 'It takes patience this piercing \/ of noise in an archive of voices.' The reader is enticed by hints and clues, by tone and rhythm, by fragment and exclamation. These poems build sounds-scapes of imagery, veering away from straightforward narrative. Williams confronts our preconceptions about what it might mean to be a woman writing against the background of two formidable traditions: Welsh-speaking Wales and English literature. A thoughtful, subtle and fascinating first collection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Here’s a fine writer who is completely unique in Wales. Nerys Williams... [is] a tremendous addition to the Seren poetry list.” \u003cbr\u003eRobert Minhinnick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNerys Williams\u003c\/b\u003e is from Carmarthenshire. She has an MA in Contemporary Poetry and a D.Phil in American Studies. Before her post-graduate studies she worked in the sound department at BBC Wales and as an assistant in mental health care. In 2005 Nerys won the Ted McNulty Prize for Best Single Poem for ‘The Dead Zoo’, which appears in this collection. She is the author of two critical books: \u003ci\u003eThe Edinburgh Critical Guide to Contemporary Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e (2011), and \u003ci\u003eReading Error: The Lyric and Contemporary Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e (2007). She now lectures in American Literature at University College, Dublin.","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040995456,"sku":"9781854115386","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_fcbfe948-d341-48b8-a50c-1d4e86196c9a.jpeg?v=1752237376"},{"product_id":"oxygen-new-poets-from-wales","title":"Oxygen: New Poets from Wales","description":"Celebrating the current resurgence of poetry by writers under 45 in Wales, \u003ci\u003eOxygen\u003c\/i\u003e is a snapshot of recently established and exciting new talent writing in both the languages of Wales. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUrban and rural, ironic and earnest, lyrical and lively, the poetry reveals there is plenty to get excited about. It may not be Cool Cymru but poetry is definitely edging towards the new rock and roll in Welsh writing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContributors include Gwyneth Lewis, Oliver Reynolds, Paul Henry, Sarah Corbett, Kate Bingham, Owen Sheers, Frances Williams, Catherine Fisher, Don Rodgers and others in English, and Gwyneth Lewis (again!), Ifor ap Glyn, Twm Morys, Elin ap Hywel, Meirion McIntyre Huws, Elin Llwyd Morgan and others in Welsh. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThirty new poets in all, ready to roll over Offa's Dyke.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040995620,"sku":"9781854112842","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_0d275c63-6984-4609-a2a8-ff8c0a108928.jpeg?v=1752237516"},{"product_id":"the-brittle-sea","title":"The Brittle Sea","description":"For two decades Paul Henry has been quietly building an oeuvre of beautifully crafted poems. Born into a family of musicians, music pervades his poems on childhood, as do a large cast of aunts, neighbours, friends and relations, many of whom appear in Dylan Thomas-like character sketches. Some of his earliest portrait-poems are set against the Breconshire villages where Henry lived from his mid teens; a move south to Newport inspires poems about the undulating river Usk and the post-industrial cityscape. And, by popular request, in the ‘new poems’ section, rugby fans will find the three poems Henry was commissioned to write for BBC2’s ‘Poetry in Motion’, which celebrated the Welsh national rugby team as they prepared for the 2008 Rugby World Cup.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Paul Henry is the poet I wish I could be. 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His other collections, all published by Seren, are \u003ci\u003eIngrid’s Husband\u003c\/i\u003e (2007), \u003ci\u003eThe Breath of Sleeping Boys and other poems\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Slipped Leash\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Milk Thief\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCaptive Audience\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTime Pieces\u003c\/i\u003e. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1989. He ran the Ledbury Festival’s Poetry Cafe at Hereford’s Courtyard Theatre. A regular tutor at Ty Newydd, Wales’s national writers’ centre, he also works as an associate lecturer at the University of Glamorgan and as a radio presenter for BBC Wales. He lives in Crickhowell, Powys.","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040995804,"sku":"9781854115249","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_bbfbcb71-5565-4d39-bac7-37afb63b5f06.jpeg?v=1752237675"},{"product_id":"zen-cymru","title":"Zen Cymru","description":"\u003ci\u003eZen Cymru\u003c\/i\u003e is the new collection of poems by that master of modern angst, Peter Finch. Not one for quiet meditations, this voice is: loud, bewildered, satirical, furious, sad, fearful and funny. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a Wales that missed its revolution in 'I Chew Gum and Think of Rifles'. This is a Wales beset by: rain, the ghosts of hard-drinking poets, of holy wells guarded by heifers, of sports crowds, Ikea, sheep, 'enormous storm clouds', and the 'Entry of Christ Into Cardiff, 2005'. A health scare merits a mini-epic in 'The Clinic'. Elvis is seen in Asda, Merthyr. Travel brings little respite, only access to foreign anxieties and temptations. We visit 'The Miró Minibar' in Barcelona, look for Bélla Bartók in Hungary, take a road trip to Ireland, find more rain and that 'The land gives out in an emerald flail.' America offers defunct bluesmen, a murderous Phil Spector, and over-zealous security personnel near the Chelsea Hotel, NYC. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinch is a well known performance poet and his poems have the immediacy and the dramatic impact of pieces conceived for the stage. Formal innovation is allied with themes that are resonant and deeply humane. \u003ci\u003eZen Cymru\u003c\/i\u003e will win yet more fans to the Finch cult.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Finch\u003c\/b\u003e is a poet, author and critic who lives in Cardiff. He is author of the hugely popular Seren titles \u003ci\u003eReal Cardiff\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eReal Cardiff Two\u003c\/i\u003e. His numerous poetry titles include \u003ci\u003eUseful\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePoems for Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eFood\u003c\/i\u003e from Seren. A former publisher and bookseller, he is now Chief Executive of the Welsh Academy, the Welsh Literature Promotion Agency and Society of Writers.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040996244,"sku":"9781854115003","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_e745063c-6ad2-4e2e-bb39-8a5aab4f1d6d.jpeg?v=1752237061"},{"product_id":"a-sea-in-the-desert","title":"A Sea in the Desert","description":"Leslie Norris's eleventh collection of poetry is marked by his observation of the natural world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMany of the poems are concerned with the cyclical processes of nature migration, the seasons, life and death. They are written with all the sharpness of language, exactness of imagery and vivid painterly description which readers have come to expect in his work. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong these nature poems are others about Norris's childhood, one tinged with foreboding at the prospect of a Second World War and with regret at the subsequent deaths of many of his friends. These poems, and a meditation at the grave of Dylan Thomas, are marked by a finely articulated compassion and humanity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Has the ability to transport emotion by way of observation of nature, letting the latter operate as a symbolic agent... one is reminded of the best of Thomas Hardy\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"His ear is perfect as well as his eye, and the deftness of his technique with language is a constant delight\"\u003cbr\u003eTed Walker \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLeslie Norris\u003c\/b\u003e (1921 - 2006) was born in Merthyr Tydfil. Formerly a teacher and headmaster, he for many years taught literature and creative writing in American universities, most recently at Brigham Young, Utah, where he was Christiansen Professor of Poetry. He wrote poetry since 1941 and published eleven collections, including a \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53675021238657,"sku":"9781854110152","price":4.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_d3cf2b9a-ffce-42c0-826e-4f1b723505aa.jpeg?v=1752236449"},{"product_id":"sea-lilies-selected-poems-1984-2003","title":"Sea Lilies: Selected Poems 1984-2003","description":"This generous \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e from John Barnie includes work from seven of his previous collections: \u003ci\u003eBorderland\u003c\/i\u003e (1984), \u003ci\u003eLightning Country\u003c\/i\u003e (1987), \u003ci\u003eClay\u003c\/i\u003e (1989), \u003ci\u003eThe Confirmation\u003c\/i\u003e (1992), \u003ci\u003eThe City\u003c\/i\u003e (1993), \u003ci\u003eHeroes\u003c\/i\u003e (1996) and \u003ci\u003eAt the Salt Hotel\u003c\/i\u003e (2003). \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis poetry celebrates the natural world – its otherness from ourselves – whilst also tackling the increasingly destructive impact of humans on that world. A secondary theme running throughout the book is the manner in which small-town life, while undoubtedly secure, is also deeply confining. This ecological and sceptical outlook is aligned with a deep affinity with, and boundless curiosity about, nature and our precarious place in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e is notable for both its breadth of form and its depth of thought. Those familiar with Barnie’s work will enjoy having a selection from his varied output.Those unfamiliar will be pleasantly surprised at the range and quality of his poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Barnie\u003c\/b\u003e was born and raised in Abergavenny, and was a student in Birmingham in the 1960s. He has published work in a wide variety of journals and anthologies and has won a Welsh Arts Council Prize for Literature. He now lives in Aberystwyth and until recently was Editor of the influential magazine of diverse international writing, \u003ci\u003ePlanet\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040996956,"sku":"9781854114136","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_a070c605-09f8-4d92-8193-53cff870f98f.jpeg?v=1752237675"},{"product_id":"john-powell-ward-selected-and-new-poems","title":"John Powell Ward: Selected and New Poems","description":"This substantial book features poems from the five decades of John Powell Ward's career. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt opens with early, uncollected pieces – some of which were experimental and concrete – moves on to the traditionally styled poems of the 70s and 80s and then towards a late flowering in the 90s, which features a startling shift in style and a new focus on letters and the alphabet. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis wider concerns: history, the human peril to the natural world, tragic public events (such as the King's Cross Fire), are played out across a formal grid of beautiful complexity. These strikingly original, ambitious poems are both profoundly moving and technically adroit. This volume offers the reader a wide selection from the author’s six published books, along with several new poems.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In no other time but our own, perhaps, would a poet feel obliged to wrap up his moralizing in such delicate phraseology, or make such a backdoor affair of his faith. Ward, however, manages brilliantly, combining an uncompromising integrity with a contemporary flair for understatement... One is left with the impression of having been told the truth cleanly and with warmth.\"                  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A major contribution to late twentieth century poetry.\"\u003cbr\u003eBulletin of the Welsh Academy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Powell Ward\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Suffolk and educated at the Universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Wales. Editor of \u003ci\u003ePoetry Wales\u003c\/i\u003e from 1975 to 1980, he is the author of critical works on Wordsworth and R.S. Thomas among others, and editor of the Border Lines series. He has also published several volumes of poetry.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997232,"sku":"9781854113467","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_62ca105a-066f-49cc-8c5d-89f1efbb9ba1.jpeg?v=1752237375"},{"product_id":"sheenagh-pugh-later-selected-poems","title":"Sheenagh Pugh: Later Selected Poems","description":"A poet renowned for the clarity of her style, the originality of her subject matter, and for her erudite and spiky online presence, Sheenagh Pugh is a poet at the height of her career. This book is a companion to her popular earlier \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, originally published in 1990 and now a GCSE set text. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis volume collects a wide selection of the later poems of Sheenagh Pugh, from five individual collections: \u003ci\u003eSing for the Taxman\u003c\/i\u003e (1993), \u003ci\u003eId's Hospit\u003c\/i\u003e (1997), \u003ci\u003eStonelight\u003c\/i\u003e (1999), \u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful Lie\u003c\/i\u003e (2002), and \u003ci\u003eThe Movement of Bodies\u003c\/i\u003e (2005).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA sample of titles will tempt the reader to find out about 'The Last Wolf in Scotland', 'The Tormented Censor', why 'Captain Roberts Goes Looting', who the 'Best Jesus in Show' is, and why we are 'Envying Owen Beattie'. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThemes are often subverted, truisms reversed, clichés overthrown. Her technique is highly skilled, but unobtrusive, and therefore, in the best sense, invisible. She frequently uses traditional metre and cleverly deploys rhyme and half-rhyme. The tone is always un-strident, apt and subtly persuasive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis collection highlights the ambitious sequences that have featured in the last decade of the poet's work. A day mountain climbing inspires the three-part pastoral 'Climbing Hermaness' which opens the book; we also have 'Five Voices' which, characteristically, dramatises an otherwise curious and obscure historical anecdote about the tragic execution of Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Kattte in 1730. 'Voices in Mousa Broch' is an atmospheric four-part sequence about the Shetland Isles. 'The Arctic Chart' describes the icy landscapes of the North and the aftermath of the often tragic expeditions to explore the polar region is embodied in the moving 'Lady Franklin's Man' series, where the eponymous heroine is seen searching for many years for her lost explorer spouse. The final sequence, 'The Curious Drawer' is altogether different and might be called a series of erotic meditations on the miniature Tudor portraits of Nicholas Hilliard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSheenagh Pugh\u003c\/b\u003e is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her Selected Poems, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997344,"sku":"9781854114976","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_3294b888-3c78-489b-841a-1e717f9ac65e.jpeg?v=1752237673"},{"product_id":"sheenagh-pugh-selected-poems","title":"Sheenagh Pugh: Selected Poems","description":"Here is the best of Sheenagh Pugh's early work: a generous and wide-ranging selection from her first four collections, together with two dozen previously unpublished pieces. Notable inclusions are the prize-winning 'M.S.A.' and 'Intercity Lullaby', and the much-anthologised 'Sometimes'. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThroughout, a lively and enquiring mind is brought to bear on how we live and die, and how we might live more equitably. Sheenagh Pugh approaches her subject unpredictably, through Norse saga and snooker, apartheid and falling tortoises, in a poetry of invention and conviction. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the heart of the book is the Earth Studies sequence, \"a history of the world in 19 poems\", and the first major environmental poem of the \"green\" era. Set in the indeterminate future, it explores the rise of human civilisation, and abuse of the Earth, following them to their logical conclusion: the death of the planet. Ironic, lyrical, penetrating , these poems typify the craft and passion of Sheenagh Pugh's writing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e ends with a section of Pugh's much-admired translations, of German poets such as Simon Dach, Andreas Gryphius and Christian Hofmann von Hofmanswaldau.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSheenagh Pugh\u003c\/b\u003e is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997424,"sku":"9781854110299","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_e14b17a7-0fbf-4070-ae5a-dcf8b2a96511.jpeg?v=1752237375"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-christine-evans","title":"Selected Poems: Christine Evans","description":"Winner of the inaugural Roland Mathias Prize, Christine Evans' \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e is an immensely wideranging and accomplished overview of this major poet's work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis persuasive volume by Christine Evans selects poems from her four published collections. Often set in the wind-swept, harsh but beautiful rural landscapes of north Wales, her work offers precise observation, lyrical commentary and sensitive portrayals of family and neighbours. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncluded here are the unusual long poems: 1986's 'Falling Back', a book-length, elegaic piece about a widow coming to terms with the death of her shepherd husband; 'Cometary Phases' where a winter of star-watching charts a son's growth; and 'Island of Dark Horses' a celebration of the mysterious island of Bardsey, or Enlli, ancient site of Christian pilgrimage now home to a small farming community and a magnet for tourists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn confident and ambitious pieces like 'Deep Under' and 'Fodder' the poet starts with externals and then moves deeper, using the landscape as metaphor for emotional or spiritual states. She can also do the reverse and use local detail to touch on the political and universal, as in 'Small Rain' - a poem about the effects of Chernobyl. Readers will appreciate how the author's keen grasp of the local and particular leads out into the political and universal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith two of her books long out of print, \u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e is a welcome opportunity for new readers to experience the work of a consummate poet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChristine Evans\u003c\/b\u003e taught English on the Llyn Peninsula, where she lives with her husband and son on a farm. Her first collection, \u003ci\u003eLooking Inland\u003c\/i\u003e, was described as having \"something to say that is worth saying... a sane response to experience\". Her work is widely pubished; Seren produced four collections: \u003ci\u003eLooking Inland\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFalling Back\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCometary Phases\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIsland of Dark Horses\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997580,"sku":"9781854113344","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_065c5073-8b8d-475c-a867-932c53972f7e.jpeg?v=1752237374"},{"product_id":"skirrid-hill","title":"Skirrid Hill","description":"\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Somerset Maugham Award 2006\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIdeas of separation and divorce are important in Owen Sheers' eagerly-awaited new book: the geographical divides of borders, the separation of the dead and the living, the movement from childhood to adulthood, the ending of relationships.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch divides are both moments of 'mark-making' and moments of absence. In this collection it is often the awareness of such separation – past or impending – and the juxtaposition of these diverse states – that provides the friction from which the poems are born.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book revolves around the two poems 'Y Gaer' and 'The Hillfort', the titles themselves suggesting the linguistic divide in Wales, from poems concerned with childhood, a Welsh landscape and family, to a  more outward looking vision both geographically and historically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sheers is a vivid, sensuous writer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It is the truth in the details that suggests indisputably that Sheers is the real thing, a poet of promise whom we are sure to hear much of in the future.\"\u003cbr\u003eDannie Abse\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Owen Sheers is one of the most exciting talents around and a fabulous performer of his work.\"\u003cbr\u003eCarol Ann Duffy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn in Fiji, raised in Abergavenny, educated at Oxford and a graduate of the University of East Anglia writing programme, \u003cb\u003eOwen Sheers\u003c\/b\u003e was named as one of the Next Generation poets by the Poetry Book Society in 2004. He is the author of the best-selling poetry collection \u003ci\u003eThe Blue Book\u003c\/i\u003e, which was shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year and the Forward prize for Best First Collection in 2000. During 2004 he was writer in residence at the Wordsworth Trust. His prose book, \u003ci\u003eThe Dust Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e (Faber) was shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year and The Ondaatje Prize in 2005. \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997744,"sku":"9781854114037","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_4881bf7c-426b-4c3f-b01d-ba22e5f16f2d.jpeg?v=1752237374"},{"product_id":"snaring-heaven","title":"Snaring Heaven","description":"\"The most significant writer among these prizewinners… I take to be Christopher Meredith. He writes with freedom and perhaps unfashionable eloquence about alienation and doubt.\" So wrote Michael Hofman in the \u003ci\u003eTLS\u003c\/i\u003e of the 1983-84 Gregory Award winners. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMeredith's first short book, \u003ci\u003eThis\u003c\/i\u003e, went on to win the Welsh Arts Council Young Writer Prize in 1985. \u003ci\u003eSnaring Heaven\u003c\/i\u003e, his first full-length collection, includes some poems from the now unavailable \u003ci\u003eThis\u003c\/i\u003e, many more new pieces, and some free translations from the Welsh. The subjects range from a scratched LP, to the planet Jupiter, to a man with a cardboard box on his head, to, in the longer poems, an attempt at considering the relationship between what’s inner and personal, and the outer political world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChristopher Meredith\u003c\/b\u003e is a poet, novelist and currently lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan. 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His books are taught in universities in Wales and England.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997808,"sku":"9781854110268","price":4.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_3666b7b9-2e41-4f1c-ba1a-9329b779acf0.jpeg?v=1752236453"},{"product_id":"sunday-at-the-skin-launderette","title":"Sunday at the Skin Launderette","description":"Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2008.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQuietly persuasive and formally adept, the poems in Kathryn Simmonds' first collection engage with both the quotidian and the transcendental. Often in urban or suburban settings, her protagonists struggle with mundane tasks such as cooking or commuting or office work - all of the obstacles of modernity - and then, by some shift of attention, or by some keen narrowing of focus, they chance upon the surreal or the spiritual. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a poetry of subtle contexts and allusions, as much as concerned with the vulnerability of the body as for the fate of the soul and the idea of 'keeping faith' in God and life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An expansive imagination, a wide formal range, wit and humanity - \u003ci\u003eSunday at the Skin Laundrette\u003c\/i\u003e is a remarkable debut.\"\u003cbr\u003eMichael Symmons Roberts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Quirky, witty, moving Kathryn Simmonds' gift is to find joy and beauty in unexpected places. She invests the everyday world with an extraordinary luminosity.\" \u003cbr\u003eJackie Kay\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This playful and knowing first collection is fuelled throughout by a strong sense of lyricism... The collection is made up of such balancing acts, of gentle glimpses into the pitfalls and seeming treacheries of the everyday\" \u003cbr\u003eCharles Bainbridge, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKathryn Simmonds\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Hertfordshire in 1972, she has an MA in writing from the University of East Anglia. She currently lives in London. Kathryn received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and her pamphlet \u003ci\u003eSnug\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in 2004. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines and she was winner of the 2006 Poetry London Competition and the 2007 Wigtown Poetry Competition.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040997892,"sku":"9781854114617","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_8bddd2c5-8c7d-4e4d-80ab-08f17087bcd0.jpeg?v=1752237061"},{"product_id":"to-the-god-of-rain","title":"To the God of Rain","description":"These complex, intricate and fascinating poems are like miniature novellas, full of incident and atmosphere. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir titles set scenes: 'Whisky Drinker Considers his Skirmish with Death', 'A Futurist Looks at a Dog', 'Re-reading Lolita in a Tropical Climate'. Tim Liardet can delineate character in swift, ironic swipes; strange coincidences are celebrated; a glimpse of 'The Footwork of the Jazz Pianist' inspires a dazzling handful of perspectives. The peculiar vertigo of travel: a mixture of fear and excitement, permeates many of the poems. Love too, induces dizzying states in poems like 'Tremble' and its companion piece, 'Tremble, Tremble'. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis highly accomplished and entertaining new collection is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Tim Liardet's diverse and skilful collection deserves to be read\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTLS\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTim Liardet\u003c\/b\u003e was born in London and educated at the University of York. He has travelled extensively and worked in the fields of Information Technology and Marketing. Widely published, he currently works as a freelance writer, editor and tutor.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040998020,"sku":"9781854113351","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_501ac1cf-a634-40f9-bf0c-bd9da227c7d8.jpeg?v=1752236712"},{"product_id":"travelling-to-the-fish-orchards","title":"Travelling to the Fish Orchards","description":"Robert Seatter's debut collection is characterised by an open, highly personal tone; his style is fresh and uncluttered; his imagery charged and luminous. A love for Italy pervades the book, from a witty poem on an early language text, \u003ci\u003eLiving Italian\u003c\/i\u003e (1955) to 'The Book of Milan' series which concludes the collection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An assured and thoughtful debut that introduces a confident and accessible poetic voice.\" \u003cbr\u003eSinead Sturgeon, \u003ci\u003eOxford Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"His poetry takes everyday material - grounded in experience of clothes, sex, language, family - and makes it luminous.\"\u003cbr\u003eMatthew Jarvis, \u003ci\u003ePoetry Wales\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A very assured first collection, and one in which the best poems are so very strong…\" \u003cbr\u003eCatherine Smith, \u003ci\u003eThe Frogmore Papers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"His poems are firmly embedded in family and in personal experience… Seatter has talent\" \u003cbr\u003eJoe Sheerin, \u003ci\u003ePoetry London\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter studying English at Oxford University, \u003cb\u003eRobert Seatter\u003c\/b\u003e worked variously as an EFL teacher in Italy and France, an actor, a journalist, in publishing and broadcasting. He lives in London where he now works for the BBC. His poetry has been widely published, has won numerous awards and has been featured on radio, television and London buses.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040998096,"sku":"9781854113245","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_b372e9b8-57ab-4157-aec6-4cb8cf6a460e.jpeg?v=1752236711"},{"product_id":"useful","title":"Useful","description":"Peter Finch's collection, \u003ci\u003eUseful\u003c\/i\u003e, is marked by all the restless energy, humour and angst that is so characteristic of this compulsively entertaining poet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the varied subjects to come under the poet's subversive scrutiny are Modern Art, the Blues, computers, automobiles, ex-wives, recalcitrant children, aged parents, bleak Welsh landscapes, factory workers, writing classes, old shirts and beach stones. His continuing fascination with technique is highlighted in the second half of the collection which includes a short section of visual pieces as well as the elaborate code of 'One of Our Presidents: Six Variations for Tony Conran'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso here are poems written for particular performances or directly inspired by works of art. A tireless innovator, an astute and frequently very funny observer of culture and society, Peter Finch will win yet more readers over with \u003ci\u003eUseful\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Just this side of chaos\"\u003cbr\u003eJon Gower\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A defiant individualist, restlessly pushing words beyond their given forms and meanings to say new things in new ways about our complicated knife-edge times\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWestern Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"... deserves a Welsh Knighthood\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDictionary of the Avant-Gardes\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Finch\u003c\/b\u003e is a poet, author and critic who lives in Cardiff. He is author of the hugely popular Seren titles \u003ci\u003eReal Cardiff\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eReal Cardiff Two\u003c\/i\u003e. His numerous poetry titles include \u003ci\u003eUseful\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePoems for Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eFood\u003c\/i\u003e from Seren, \u003ci\u003eAntibodies\u003c\/i\u003e from Stride, and \u003ci\u003eVizet\u003c\/i\u003e, a selected poems in Hungarian from Kronkét Könyvek. A former publisher and bookseller, he is now Chief Executive of the Welsh Academy, the Welsh Literature Promotion Agency and Society of Writers.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040998416,"sku":"9781854111760","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_50efa210-38a3-49c1-9435-1cbd0e89ac1e.jpeg?v=1752236710"},{"product_id":"visibility","title":"Visibility","description":"This new collection from Graham Mort selects work from five previous collections and adds a substantial section of new poems. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom early lyrics focused in the natural world, he quickly developed his own distinctive narrative style, encompassing a sharp eye for detail, an acute grasp of character, and a wonderful ability to evoke atmosphere and situation. A distinguished and intellectually sustaining body of work, it does not forget that we also think through feeling, seeing and touching. Those qualities are augmented by a challenging moral heft and a sense of the consequence and implications of our actions in both personal and political domains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mort is prepared to employ rhyme, half-rhyme and internal rhyme, and there are a couple of sonnets here. His control of the verse-line and the verse-paragraph are as impressive as his incisive way with words and images.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePlanet\u003c\/i\u003e on \u003ci\u003eA Night on the Lash\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mort has always been a master of technique, of 'show not tell', and his poems evoke the noises and smells of other countries, the unique atmosphere of other lives and times\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEdinburgh Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Graham Mort is acknowledged as one of contemporary verse's most accomplished practitioners... A master technician, Mort forswears flash and glamour in favour of an architectural attention to the relationship between form and language, fitting words to lines with a dexterous fluency.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGraham Mort\u003c\/b\u003e has had a lengthy career as a freelance writer and artist in education, specialising in innovative combined arts projects. He has taught writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and Taliesin Trust and was director of studies for the Open College of the Arts. He lectures in Creative Writing at Lancaster University where he directs the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research and develops writing projects in Africa for the British Council. Amongst his many awards are the Cheltenham Poetry Competition first prize (twice), a major Eric Gregory Award, two Duncan Lawrie prizes in the Arvon Foundation International Poetry competition, and a Poetry Book Society recommendation.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040998476,"sku":"9781854114396","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_38bb985c-7e3a-4ff3-a47d-3448019f6d14.jpeg?v=1752237673"},{"product_id":"war-voices","title":"War Voices","description":"War and its effects have been an enduring subject throughout the twenty-five year writing career of Tony Curtis. The resulting poetry might have been bleak but for the sensitivity with which Curtis handles the theme, and the bravery and dignity in the face of barbarism which he finds underlying conflict. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePoems such as 'Soup', shortlisted for the Observer \/ Arvon Prize, and 'The Death of Richard Beattie - Seaman', winner of the National Poetry Competition, are a measure of Curtis's skill in addressing this difficult subject. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom Flanders to Bosnia, via Russia and Suez, India and Ireland, Vietnam and the Cold War, these War Voices speak of protest, remembrance and commemoration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTony Curtis\u003c\/b\u003e is Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan where he  directs an MPhil in Writing. He has published 26 books, including nine poetry collections. A selection of his poetry has recently been translated and published in Armenia. He is also the editor of several anthologies including \u003ci\u003eAfter the First Death\u003c\/i\u003e, a volume of war writing (2007).\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040998528,"sku":"9781854111418","price":5.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_b35feaf4-3e95-47ab-ae6e-a1cced5a1018.jpeg?v=1752236578"},{"product_id":"welsh-retrospective","title":"Welsh Retrospective","description":"\u003ci\u003eWelsh Retrospective\u003c\/i\u003e is a selection of poems about his native Wales by one of Britain's most popular poets. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDannie Abse's Welsh and Jewish backgrounds have been essential to his writings. Wales and Cardiff, in particular, have haunted his imagination. In this revealing new book he writes movingly about the Cardiff of his childhood, home of his beloved Bluebirds football team, and also about the small village of Ogmore-by-Sea, location of early holidays and for many years his home in Wales. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSelected from the whole of Dannie Abse's writing career, the book includes such well known and well-loved poems as 'Return to Cardiff' and 'In the Theatre' alongside many previously uncollected poems. Abse's range is remarkable. Vivid character portraits of Aunt Alice and Cousin Sidney sit next to tributes to poet predecessors, Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins. Some poems draw on Jewish writings, others on Welsh language literature. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWelsh Retrospective\u003c\/i\u003e gives fascinating insights into Dannie Abse's Wales and his versatility as a poet. His Wales is anything but parochial, his poems effortlessly universal. Every reader will be struck by a poet who has a gift for accepting mortality with wise optimism. The book is edited by Cary Archard who provides an introduction and notes on the poems.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDannie Abse\u003c\/b\u003e (b.1923) was born in Cardiff and studied Medicine at Cardiff, King's College and Westminster Hospital. A poet, novelist, playwright, he has also published diaries and autobiography. He has published eleven volumes of poetry including a \u003ci\u003eCollected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040998964,"sku":"9781854114860","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_1d4a7bd2-9157-4b37-bdad-6943512d763d.jpeg?v=1752237373"},{"product_id":"capel-sion","title":"Capel Sion","description":"Caradoc Evans is perhaps the most controversial writer Wales has ever produced. His first book, \u003ci\u003eMy People\u003c\/i\u003e, met with outrage from the pulpit and the popular press, was banned in Cardiff, but also earned Evans comparison with Zola, Joyce and Lawrence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eCapel Sion\u003c\/i\u003e Evans returned to his themes with relish, attacking the Liberal-Nonconformist hierarchy which, he claimed, ground under its heel the peasantry of west Wales. The response was as it had been for his first book, confirmation that an outstanding author was writing at the height of his powers. \u003ci\u003eCapel Sion\u003c\/i\u003e was originally published in 1916. This edition is edited and introduced by John Harris, the leading authority of Caradoc Evans and tireless researcher into his life and work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCaradoc Evans\u003c\/b\u003e (1878-1945) short story writer and novelist was born in west Wales. A controversial figure he worked in Carmarthen and London in the drapery trade before becoming a journalist and editor. His first book of stories, \u003ci\u003eMy People\u003c\/i\u003e (1915) brought instant infamy for its portrayal of the west Wales peasantry and made him, for many years, the most hated man in Wales.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040999760,"sku":"9781854113085","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_d4362fb3-9462-47d0-a20b-f04a3111e050.jpeg?v=1752236710"},{"product_id":"cecil-and-noreen","title":"Cecil and Noreen","description":"The sequel to the admired \u003ci\u003eLast Light Breaking\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA poignant, subtle, and amusing love story in which an elderly couple - Cecil and Noreen - reminisce about their courtship and marriage. In a nursing home, Cecil recollects and relives the marriage through the aide-memoir of Noreen's preserved letters, kept in a box at his bedside. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNoreen visits the ailing Cecil twice daily, and provides a more reliable version of the events the letters describe. Both are committed Catholics. The novel opens with their first meeting at church, at which Noreen accidentally floors Cecil with a ceremonial banner. Beautifully-written and deeply compassionate, \u003ci\u003eCecil \u0026amp; Noreen\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel which ennobles the 'ordinary' lives of its characters. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn in Cardiff, \u003cb\u003ePatrick Corcoran\u003c\/b\u003e was educated at Atlantic College, St Donats, and at Bristol University. He has won several prizes for his short stories, and was a finalist in \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e short story competition. He works for the Family Court Advisory Service, and is married with three children.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040999808,"sku":"9781854113887","price":6.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_67f8a063-9593-45df-a21d-d0425d4f13f2.jpeg?v=1752236774"},{"product_id":"crystal-spirit","title":"Crystal Spirit","description":"\u003ci\u003eCrystal Spirit\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of David Hicks, arrogant and petulant son of a Welsh collier, set to escape the pit through education, but trapped into marriage and a shopkeeping job he hates. Denied his freedom he grows to maturity through the Labour movement and his experiences as a volunteer in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a gripping and affecting story, persuasive and realistic, sympathetic in its portrayal of life in the Depression and full of remarkable scenes from the Spanish Civil War. Closely researched, \u003ci\u003eCrystal Spirit\u003c\/i\u003e brings to life a period which has almost slipped from memory. It is a moving testament to those who suffered in Wales and Spain, yet remained undefeated by the horrors of poverty and a brutal war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRoger Granelli\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eDark Edge\u003c\/i\u003e, the first novel to emerge from the 1984 miners' strike; \u003ci\u003eOut of Nowhere\u003c\/i\u003e, a tale of murder and jazz in the USA; \u003ci\u003eStatus Zero\u003c\/i\u003e, a bleak account of crime and deprivation; and \u003ci\u003eResolution\u003c\/i\u003e, a subtle and compelling examination of human passion.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041000108,"sku":"9781854113320","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_66c12439-45bd-466b-97b2-28642a5208eb.jpeg?v=1752237060"},{"product_id":"eleven","title":"Eleven","description":"In Cardiff's offices and call centres the twenty-something white collar workers of the new sweatshops email each other with work issues, jokes, arrangements for their social lives, gossip and the products of sheer boredom. As the day passes, would-be author Martin conducts this correspondence and saves in Drafts a variety of emails to himself – a commentary on his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartin is tired of customer services, in denial over breaking up with his girlfriend, worried about 'that incident' in London, and baffled by the triviality of his life and those of his drinking, recreational drug-taking friends. What is the plot he's supposed to be following? How has it come to this? When on this day, 11th September, 2001, people fly airliners into buildings, Martin knows he's reached a critical point in his life. He sends his final email…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTold entirely through emails, part The Office, part Beckett, \u003ci\u003eEleven\u003c\/i\u003e is a striking debut novel: smart, funny, brutally sad, and a genuine response to 21st century society in the UK and beyond.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A compulsive read, written entirely in the form of emails sent by the characters over the course of one day. Martin and his friends work in the offices and call centres of Cardiff; and in its hilarious depiction of the grim hypocrisy of modern working life, \u003ci\u003eEleven\u003c\/i\u003e is on a par with The Office.\" Ray French, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In offering a dark comedy, Llewellyn shows more taste than do many more earnest seekers of artistic relevance. Llewellyn's novel is a funny, disturbing view of a disaffected age\"\u003cbr\u003eNicholas Clee, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The rapid-fire volley of email traffic provides the ideal vehicle for Llewellyn's spiky humour... \u003ci\u003eEleven\u003c\/i\u003e conveys a longing to reach beyond the frequently alienating experience of modern-day life to something more meaningful and humane\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Welsh Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDavid Llewellyn\u003c\/b\u003e was raised in Pontypool and is a graduate of Dartington College of Arts. He has written scripts for the BBC and several short stories. David now lives and works in Cardiff. This is his first novel.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041000340,"sku":"9781854114150","price":6.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_07650221-e79f-4137-9a43-2cfd1a9c2c5b.jpeg?v=1752236773"},{"product_id":"everything-must-change","title":"Everything Must Change","description":"\u003ci\u003eEverything Must Change\u003c\/i\u003e is a thoughtful first novel, exploring the place of passionately held, radical beliefs in the modern world. The novel intercuts the story of French philosopher and activist Simone Weil, with that of  21st century campaigner Meinwen Jones, adrift in a post-devolution Wales. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHailed as ‘the first post-national novel’ by Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Meinwen’s inner struggle echoes Simone’s as she devotes herself exclusively to her cause of anti-globalisation and protecting culture.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMeinwen sacrifices love, a career and a future to the 'cause' as she follows the activists' trail through TV studios, political rallies and prison, taking Simone as inspiration in her lonely battle.  But in the chambers of the Assembly, the chic restaurants of Cardiff or her hilltop in north Wales, she finds her old certainties being called into question as victory fades from view. A world away in an inter-war Europe threatened by fascism, Simone, an idealistic gifted young Jewish woman seeks a vocation to satisfy her passion for justice as well as her dangerous desire for self-sacrifice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn factories, on farms and on the battlefields of Spain, she challenges The Great Beast of totalitarianism and fascism. But her ideals seem ever more at odds with reality. When friends become enemies and enemies offer friendship, both women have to question their long-held beliefs, and find themselves facing a stark choice between life and death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA novel of ideas, \u003ci\u003eEverything Must Change\u003c\/i\u003e examines ideals of asceticism and devotion to a cause in a materialistic modern society. First published in Welsh as \u003ci\u003eRhaid i Bopeth Newid\u003c\/i\u003e (2004) and was longlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year 2005. It has been translated and extended by its author, the poet, critic and journalist, Grahame Davies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePriase for \u003ci\u003eEverything Must Change\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Philosophically weighty… it reminds me of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1940s trilogy, \u003ci\u003eLes Chemins de la Liberté\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003ePaths of Liberty\u003c\/i\u003e). Here… is set out the Welsh post-nationalistic choice. This is the first post-national novel.\"\u003cbr\u003eLord Dafydd Elis Thomas\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"… a compelling glimpse of a compelling personality. The book is pertinent, provocative and entertaining – rich nourishment for anybody interested in the way culture and identity inform the lives we make.\"\u003cbr\u003eOwen Martell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"his sure eye and an ironic detachment enable him to reflect on the duality and mutability that abound, post devolution… this is a serious book, but not a heavy one; there is a wry humour, the narrative progresses at a good pace, and scenes interleave like filmic episodes. In short it's well worth reading.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCambria\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGrahame Davies\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Wrexham but lives now in Cardiff. The Welsh language editor of \u003ci\u003ePoetry Wales\u003c\/i\u003e, he has published a prize-winning collection of poems, \u003ci\u003eAdennill Tir\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSefyll yn y Bwlch\u003c\/i\u003e, a volume of criticism.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041000464,"sku":"9781854114235","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_0c91df5d-aad3-4da5-9107-f97db768f069.jpeg?v=1752237059"},{"product_id":"fighting-pretty","title":"Fighting Pretty","description":"Women's boxing may not yet be an Olympic sport, after plans to preview it in Beijing were dropped. But there's plenty of fight left in the sport yet, not least in the Welsh valleys.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten in honest, original prose, sharp with imagery and a love of place, debut author Louise Walsh tells a warm, no-holds-barred story of a Cardiff girl who refuses to throw in the towel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLizzie is a young woman who's taken a few knocks in life. But she's still standing and looking to her love of boxing to see her through. She's not quite sure where it comes from, this passion  for the ring, it could be her granddad and the faded photo she has of  him boxing for Wales in a red vest and home-made shorts…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReeling from divorce, jobless and living back home with her embittered father, Lizzie throws everything into boxing training, treating herself to lessons from an ex-pro. Then she meets up with a bunch of old-time trainers at a Valleys gym, who take the lonely city girl under their wing. Despite battles with her weight and other demons, Lizzie seems to be ahead on points. But will she ever get to wear that longed-for red vest?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWalsh peers into the macho world of boxing with tenderness and  telling humour, and discovers that maybe the barriers that separate men and women aren't so high after all. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLouise Walsh\u003c\/b\u003e lives in Cardiff where she also works as a legal secretary. She has always loved writing and boxing and is a member of Cardiff Writers' Circle. \u003ci\u003eFighting Pretty\u003c\/i\u003e is her first novel.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041000532,"sku":"9781854114747","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_8faef04b-7797-4418-b711-42fc1ce12cd4.jpeg?v=1752237059"},{"product_id":"foreign-bodies","title":"Foreign Bodies","description":"'Deep down she had always known that the world was like this. It was incredible to think of all those people in their offices in London still living their grey lives, while here in the Philippines… this. Life bursting out everywhere.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFresh from the UK, Emma thinks she has fallen in love with a place, a person, and pursues the man of her dreams with a colonial zeal. 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That is the authorized version.' \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo begins this remarkable account of six months' service with the British Expeditionary Force in France, up to and including the terrible retreat to and evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk at the end of May, 1940.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbsorbing, affecting, thrilling, often funny, this book is very different from other war memoirs. It was the first on-the-ground account of Dunkirk to be published (in 1942) and lacks nothing in the immediacy of its telling. The narrative is gripping and the style is revolutionary, immersing the readers in the emotional and psychological turbulence of the author's experience, and making them feel they are living through it themselves. The result is a stunningly authentic and involving record of one of the defining episodes of twentieth-century British history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditor N. H. 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But the psychic shock waves of an event that once shook the world are still felt in his village, all that is left of what was once Wales.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGwidion's unusual mental powers bring him to the attention of the world's remaining politicians, desperate for a way to escape the failing Earth. But in a world which has lost track of its true history, Gwidion is determined to find out the truth about his past. 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This is a big, multiviewpoint fantasy, which builds with smooth assurance from a gentle start in a peaceful, post-apocalyptic community to a wider, far more sinister perspective, shot through with tension and conflict. In the struggle to create a new future for mankind, the story cleverly mirrors our own contemporary world and illustrates with an original eye the possible consequences of our current lifestyles and political choices. This is a captivating read.\"\u003cbr\u003eLiz Whittaker\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"An ambitious and imaginative science fiction debut\"\u003cbr\u003eCatherine Fisher\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An extraordinary mystical fable, shot through with a warm humanity\"\u003cbr\u003eRobert Nisbet\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEifion Jenkins\u003c\/b\u003e is a freelance writer and journalist living in West Wales. His published and performed works include a stage play, \u003ci\u003eNightshift Blues\u003c\/i\u003e, short stories and poetry. As well as writing comedy sketches for TV shows he has also had a play, \u003ci\u003eReal Sisters Don't Eat Meat\u003c\/i\u003e, and a short story, \u003ci\u003eThe Death of Brian\u003c\/i\u003e, broadcast on BBC Radio. He is the author of a social history of South Wales in the 20th century, and \u003ci\u003eIf You Fall I Will Catch You\u003c\/i\u003e is his first novel. He was recently commissioned to write a short story — \u003ci\u003eNever a Good Day to Die\u003c\/i\u003e — to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in December 2008. 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Richard Collins' dark-hearted love story is a gripping tale that unfolds with immense narrative skill.\"  \u003cbr\u003eThe Whitbread First Novel Award Judges\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is really a novel of images, the stormy lonely sea confronting the settled land of the past, a past only comforting insofar as it is set aside. The descriptions of life at sea and on land are rich and convincing\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndependent on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRichard Collins\u003c\/b\u003e has been a farm labourer, gardener and estate worker. 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And as they search the landscapes and myths of the past they uncover domestic and national tyranny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tale twists together strands of dream, daydream and reality as Duxie journeys towards freedom - and a final understanding of what caused his amnesia. Because lurking deep within his dreams is a sinister, vampire figure called Mr Cassini, who drinks women's tears, keeps stolen mannequins in a darkened room, and gets up to terrible deeds with his policeman side-kick. Journeying through time, Duxie investigates caves and wells, mystics and madness, and seeks out four extraordinary champions to help him stage a showcase trial on a mountain in the centre of Wales.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMr Cassini\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel with many themes, including monsters, snow, picnics, islands, drugs, rainbows, eating disorders, insects, justice and magic. 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Hidden apocrypha, kaleidoscopic rainbows and cabbalistic numerals notwithstanding, Lloyd Jones's use of language and emotion is second to none in contemporary Welsh literature\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"it is an exhilarating, amusing skip through multiple stories and fantastical factual forays... absurdist and resonant, this is a meditation on nation that is anything but straightforward\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFormer farm-worker, newspaper editor, chamber-of-horrors employee and lecturer, \u003cb\u003eLloyd Jones\u003c\/b\u003e lives in Llanfairfechan, on the north Wales coast. 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Not only this but he's never quite sure how he's drawn into murdering his future wife’s fiancé, losing his only son and switching beds with the king of the underworld… In this bizarrely upside-down, medieval world of the near future, life is cheap and the surf is amazing; but you need a horse to get home again down the M4.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Ninth Wave\u003c\/i\u003e is an arresting, contemporary retelling of a centuries-old Welsh myth. Russell Celyn Jones swops the magical for the psychological, the courtly for the post-feminist and goes back to Swansea Bay to complete some unfinished business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe eleven stories in the Mabinogion come from two medieval Welsh manuscripts, with roots dating back many centuries earlier. They bring us Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and their own view of the Island of Britain. There is enchantment and shapeshifting, conflict, peacemaking, love and betrayal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this series commissioned by Seren, the old tales are at the heart of the new. Each author reinvents a story in their own way: creating fresh, contemporary tales that speak to us as much of our own world as of events long gone. Based on 'Pwyll, Lord of Dyfed', \u003ci\u003eThe Ninth Wave\u003c\/i\u003e is an eerie and compelling mix of past, present and future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRussell Celyn Jones\u003c\/b\u003e is a regular book reviewer for \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e and has written features for numerous national papers. He lives with his wife and three children in London. He was the recipient of a Society of Authors Award in 1996.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041002148,"sku":"9781854115140","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_a49a0d49-6768-4c0c-92e1-4fa2871a1247.jpeg?v=1752237055"},{"product_id":"non-return","title":"Non-Return","description":"A hugely energetic rumination on politics, family and fiction, \u003ci\u003eNon-Return\u003c\/i\u003e traces the life of a technical draughtsman and writer, following his efforts to reconcile his art and his everyday life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInterspersed with exquisitely-written short fictions, this is a novel about fatherhood, work, memory, the disempowerment of the individual, and the significance of protest - most keenly explored in the death of the narrator's wife, a resident of the Greenham Common peace camp.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNon-Return\u003c\/i\u003e is a dazzlingly innovative work of fiction from an ambitious, politicised, and deeply humane writer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘What drives him are ideas. Ideas are the organs – liver, kidneys, heart, brain – that keep his new novel living and breathing’ New Welsh Review, Summer 2006 by Richard Poole.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One of the most skilful writers of our age\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReview of Contemporary Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eNon-Return\u003c\/i\u003e is really many novels, all of them hard to put down.\"\u003cbr\u003eRussel Hoban\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"One of the most imperiously intelligent fiction-writers alive\"\u003cbr\u003eNeal Ascherson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDai Vaughan\u003c\/b\u003e is one of the most highly-regarded documentary film editors to have worked in Britain. His previous novels include \u003ci\u003eMoritur\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Cloud Chamber\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the author of \u003ci\u003eFor Documentary: 12 Essays\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041002204,"sku":"9781854113917","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_fb798748-06f6-40e2-b0bc-8579812b771b.jpeg?v=1752237055"},{"product_id":"the-old-and-the-young","title":"The Old and the Young","description":"English literature has a fine tradition of rural writing, and one of this century's greatest exponents was Margiad Evans (1909-1958). Although born in Uxbridge, she was brought up near Ross-on-Wye, and it is the south Herefordshire borderlands, its farmsteads, hamlets and towns, which are the setting for \u003ci\u003eThe Old And The Young\u003c\/i\u003e, her collection of short stories first published in 1948.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese fifteen stories are a distillation and refinement of all that is best in Evans's writing. A close observer of nature, her descriptions of trees, water, rocks, the movement of air and the interplay of light and darkness, are both exact and fluid. She was equally attendant to the subtleties of the human world. Her child's-eye narrations are remarkably empathetic, coloured and informed by memories of an idyllic year spent with her sister on her aunt's farm near the Wye. But the countryside, though treasured, is not romanticised. A rose-covered cottage could mean isolation, poverty and back-breaking physical labour, as Evans herself experienced. Her sympathies with the old, the infirm, the lonely and the careworn are a constant strand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn many of these stories, all but one written during the Forties, the hardships of rural living are exacerbated by the war. Men are absent, families are separated, women have to shoulder added burdens. This collection is testament to the quiet heroism of the home front, to the stoic resourcefulness of those who have no cenotaph. Indeed, in war or in peace, it is Evans's ability to delineate the defining nature of small incidents, and to uncover in a precise locality moments of profound spirituality, which raise \u003ci\u003eThe Old And The Young\u003c\/i\u003e to the level of a classic. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMargiad Evans\u003c\/b\u003e (1909-1958) was born in Uxbridge, London and moved to Ross on Wye in 1920. She was the author of four novels, \u003ci\u003eCountry Dance\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Wooden Doctor\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTurf or Stone\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCreed\u003c\/i\u003e. Her short stories, a genre which includes some of her finest writing, were collected in the volume \u003ci\u003eThe Old and the Young\u003c\/i\u003e and her verse in \u003ci\u003ePoems from Obscurity\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eA Candle Ahead\u003c\/i\u003e.  She also wrote two autobiographical works \u003ci\u003eAutobiography\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eA Ray of Darkness\u003c\/i\u003e in which she wrote movingly and with dignity about the onset of epilepsy and her search for God.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041002260,"sku":"9781854112217","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_586ca033-cc67-4ebd-940c-55652edc7ca3.jpeg?v=1752236708"},{"product_id":"old-people-are-a-problem","title":"Old People are a Problem","description":"The western world is growing old and as the 'silver' readership increases the octogenarian - though sprightly - Emyr Humphreys has written six long stories for and about the elderly. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHumphreys' generation has seen at least one World War, a Cold War, a global economic depression, the end of the great national empires - and communism - and huge technological advances. It is also the generation which saw universal enfranchisement and became actively engaged, politically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these stories Humphreys explores change: political, social and physical, and its effects on the individual and society. The stories also represent an exploration of what the experience of age can offer the twenty-first century, and how that century can accommodate the old and their ideas. They range across such issues as asylum-seeking, cultural nationalism in Wales and political nationalism in Europe. All of which sounds abstract and theoretical, whereas the stories are written in Humphreys' engaging, inclusive style. The narrative is accessible to the general reader but has challenging and thought-provoking undercurrents which give the writing the gravitas we expect from this author. This is the fourth Humphreys original that Seren has published (the eighth title in all) and the best yet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEmyr Humphreys \u003c\/b\u003e is the author of twenty novels in English and Welsh, and has also published collections of stories and poetry. He has written screenplays and adapted other works for television and radio, in addition to producing and directing in both of those media. His novels have won the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year, Hawthornden and other prizes.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041002304,"sku":"9781854113313","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_c248d806-1258-4c44-84be-7f9c63373663.jpeg?v=1752236707"},{"product_id":"pumping-up-napoleon","title":"Pumping Up Napoleon","description":"\u003ci\u003ePumping Up Napoleon\u003c\/i\u003e is an assured collection of fifteen short stories with an offbeat take on human relationships, and the relationship of the rather unreliable human body to mind and spirit. 'Offbeat' includes dog massage, cloning your own four-foot son for organ transplants, and a university lecturer's romance with a resurrected Napoleon Bonaparte.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaria Donovan takes us on a bizarre, funny and often touching tour of death and laughter, love and space travel. Her light, humorous touch allows darker strands to surface repeatedly – dislocated, lonely lives, out of sync with their surroundings are set alongside human oddity and tenderness. These understated, well-crafted stories constantly surprise and engage, producing a fine, enjoyable and thought-provoking first collection. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"These stories are remarkable, and engrossing: sometimes funny, sometimes sinister, always accomplished. Some will be classics.\" \u003cbr\u003eFay Weldon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Maria Donovan's beautifully poised stories exploit the friction between the ordinary and the truly bizarre. The reader laughs, and shivers, and finishes many with a lump in the throat.\" \u003cbr\u003eEmma Darwin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This compelling, at times laugh-out-loud, at times disturbing, tale ['Pumping Up Napoleon'] seemed to me to have the seeds of something larger in it. The ending… is handled with poignancy and aplomb.\" \u003cbr\u003eCarol Ann Duffy \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Maria Donovan has written a brilliant collection of short stories, whose dark humour reminded me of Roald Dahl at his best. She has deservedly been selected to be read on BBC Radio 4. her well-crafted stories show a mastery of the writer's art, they engage the reader, surprise him and best of all provoke though – these are parables for the human condition.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe London Miscellany\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Maria Donovan's short stories share a light playful quality... Donovan's miniature dramas resonate with lively wit, and quite literally, open (often bizarre) new worlds.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Welsh Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOriginally from west Dorset, author \u003cb\u003eMaria Donovan\u003c\/b\u003e is a former nurse, gardener and magician's assistant who lived in Holland for ten years before coming home (by moped) to concentrate on her writing. She lived in Cardiff while studying at the University of Glamorgan (Pontypridd) where she gained an honours degree in English Studies and an MPhil in Writing. She now lives on a smallholding in West Wales.\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041002484,"sku":"9781854114419","price":6.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_c456413b-0446-49ed-a6bd-035ff4755b80.jpeg?v=1752236772"},{"product_id":"remembering-carmen","title":"Remembering Carmen","description":"Nicholas Murray's second novel is an elegant dissection of modern romantic mores. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChristopher, a successful shopfitter specialising in transforming dilapidated London buildings into swanky bistros, is romantically involved with Carmen, a one-time academic now unhappily employed as a magazine-columnist. Jimmy, millionaire and virtuoso pianist with a laissez-faire attitude to life, seems to offer the fullfillment she seeks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRemembering Carmen\u003c\/i\u003e takes the form of Christopher's 'memorial' to his former love. Set in London, Nice, the Greek Isles and Tuscany, it is a beautifully-crafted and utterly convincing portrait of adultery and its repercussions. Murray tracks his characters through the worlds of classical music, journalism, fashion-modelling and architecture, and asks where contentment might be found in an increasingly complex yet superficial world. His is a humane, concise voice, informed by European culture yet soberly grounded in modern Britain; \u003ci\u003eRemembering Carmen\u003c\/i\u003e consolidates Nicholas Murray's position as one of our most insightful and original new novelists. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNicholas Murray\u003c\/b\u003e is a biographer, poet, novelist and critic. The author of acclaimed biographies of Matthew Arnold, Andrew Marvell, Aldous Huxley and Franz Kafka, he is also the Royal Literary Fund Writer for Queen Mary College University of London.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53675021140353,"sku":"9781854113375","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_482634cc-5f68-473d-814a-df2a989b5f62.jpeg?v=1752236664"},{"product_id":"resolution","title":"Resolution","description":"Roger Granelli's fifth novel is a subtle and compelling examination of human motives and desires. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is the start of the new millennium, and Rob and Cath’s fiery relationship begins to unravel. The split sends Rob - artist, musician, dreamer - into a nightmare of paranoia and resentment, while Cath's resolve is threatened by fear, and by loyalty to the man she once loved…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRoger Granelli\u003c\/b\u003e is a musician and writer. He is the author of five novels, including \u003ci\u003eDark Edge\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCrystal Spirit\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1041002652,"sku":"9781854113337","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_86e2444f-460b-4627-9aa2-b28a9b58f049.jpeg?v=1752236706"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/seren-1\/megan-hayes.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}