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'The Estate Agent's Daughter' is Rhian Edwards' eagerly awaited follow-up to her multi-prizewinning debut 'Clueless Dogs'. Her voice is both powerfully personal, local to her Bridgend birthplace, and performative, born to be read aloud. In the title poem, the protagonist has become a surrealist house, with dream-like details 'carpeted with sycamore seeds and cherry blossom throughout'; the sturdy realism of a writing desk 'nudged/ to the brink of the bay', as well as points of sharp irony: 'all mod cons'. This poem foreshadows both the heartbreak (a shattered first marriage) and joy (the birth of a daughter), that feature in the work that follows. We also have pieces of sly irony, of disillusioned dating. There is an engaging diptych devoted to a recently deceased grandmother and grandfather, who died within months of each other, whose vivid personalities with all their tragi-comic elements, shine through. The author combines her visceral skill for description, for these are poems based in the body, with a feminist forthright courage to speak of difficult things.
Bridgend poet Rhian Edwards' stunning new pamphlet is Brood. Inspired by both a fascination with birds as well as intense personal experiences of motherhood and a broken relationship, the booklet also features beautiful, original charcoal drawings by Welsh artist Paul Edwards.
The Estate Agent’s Daughter is Rhian Edwards’ eagerly awaited follow-up to her multi-prizewinning debut Clueless Dogs. Her voice is both powerfully personal, local to her Bridgend birthplace, and performative, born to be read aloud. In the title poem, the protagonist has become a surrealist house, with dream-like details ‘carpeted with sycamore seeds and cherry blossom throughout’; the sturdy realism of a writing desk ‘nudged/ to the brink of the bay’, as well as points of sharp irony: ‘all mod cons’. This poem foreshadows both the heartbreak (a shattered first marriage) and joy (the birth of a daughter), that feature in the work that follows. We also have pieces of sly irony...
Sixteen-year-old Cate is your average student until she discovers she is the last of her bloodline and Guardian of her world, Aphora. Now she must learn to work with Alex, a hostile demon hunter, as the pair race against time to close the portal between their world and Ziamen - a parasitic demonic world. As the pair struggle with their feelings towards each other, demons and monsters seek to destroy them at every turn. A prophecy, a discovery, a secret. Destiny. Cate must choose: her Guardian duty or revenge.
Clueless Dogs is the first collection of poetry by Rhian Edwards. Already a noted performer of both her songs and poetry, this book confirms her startling talent and is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Poems like 'The Welshman Who Couldn't Sing' chronicle a fraught childhood in Bridgend, south Wales, where the sensitive child escapes through imaginative games of 'Playing Dead' and 'Broken Lifeboat'. Full of verve and humour, with a spiky syntax featuring hard-edged consonants, her language has a winning honesty and intensity. Later poems chronicle teenage lusts, student rivalries, damaged peers and tense situations. Although the author doesn't flinch from ruthless depictions in which we are often implicated by her use of the third person 'You', there is an underlying sweetness, an elegiac thread most evident in the poems of maturity, like 'Back to Bed' ,'Safe' ,'The Wrong Season' full of both the sensual rapture of love and a clear-eyed realization of its inevitable disappointments. Witness the poet in performance and it is impossible not to hear her distinctive tones when reading her work. Clueless Dogs is a brave and beautiful first book.
For readers of H Is for Hawk, an intimate memoir of belonging and loss and a mesmerizing travelogue through the landscapes and language of Wales Hiraeth is a Welsh word that's famously hard to translate. Literally, it can mean "long field" but generally translates into English, inadequately, as "homesickness." At heart, hiraeth suggests something like a bone-deep longing for an irretrievable place, person, or time—an acute awareness of the presence of absence. In The Long Field, Pamela Petro braids essential hiraeth stories of Wales with tales from her own life—as an American who found an ancient home in Wales, as a gay woman, as the survivor of a terrible AMTRAK train crash, and as the ...
Featuring a global showcase of 100 of the craft’s most exciting and influential practitioners, Low-Tech Print is an exploration of hand-made printmaking techniques and how they are used in contemporary design and illustration. It examines the huge recent resurgence in the popularity of printmaking, with chapters on screenprinting, letterpress, relief printing and other printing methods. The book shows how practitioners develop a love affair with these hand-made techniques and use them to create beautiful contemporary designs, explaining the process behind each technique and its historical context. ‘In focus’ sections profile practitioners such as the ‘Lambe Lambe’ hand-made letterpress printers of São Paulo’s Grafica Fidalga studio and cult printing techniques such as Gocco (Japan) and Chicha (Peru). Low-Tech Print is a must-have for all design, illustration, craft and printmaking enthusiasts.
A young poet from Cumbria, she writes with a compelling directness and power about her life and the lives of others. Already a winner of multiple prizes, such as the Northern Promise Award (2014), and with a noted blog and lively social media presence, Moore writes poems that are both moving and memorable. A young poet from Cumbria, Kim Moore writes with a compelling directness and power about her life and the lives of others. Already a winner of multiple prizes, such as the Northern Promise Award (2014), and with a noted blog and lively social media presence, Moore writes poems that are both moving and memorable. This is Moore's debut poetry collection.
Leaping from the pages, jostling for position alongside the Valleys mams, dads, and bamps, and described with great warmth, the superheroes in question are a motley crew: Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun, and a recalcitrant hippo. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a postindustrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.
Finding out you've got a serious illness like multiple sclerosis is a bit like falling in love. you are never quite the same again. The Last Polar Bear on Earth charts the fallout after the writer's diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis from dealing with the diagnosis, dealing with the illness itself and using writing as a form of therapy.