GUEST EDITOR Emily Blewitt
PRODUCTION & GENERAL EDITOR Gwen Davies
SHORT FICTION The Fox and Foil Mill Gavin Goodwin El Cuento Robado Dan Anthony
POETRY Mothering Song Rebecca Parfitt The Runner Abeer Ameer The Dentist Abeer Ameer Evan Roberts Maria Apichella My Welsh Wool Coat Amy Wack Cave Songs Paul Henry Camera Obscura Tracey Rhys Straw Dolly Tracey Rhys Meeting the Wolves Miranda Barnes Who Will Believe You, Isabel? Francesca Bratton KS Moore Milk Advent Helen Mort Crow Chin Helen Mort Dear Body Helen Mort Firebird Deryn Rees-Jones Ivy Rhys Milsom Unspoken II Kittie Belltree This Muted Shade Rachel Carney
NONFICTION F-off, Tarzan! Dr Polly Atkin wrests poetry away from the tree swingers and creeps towards what has been dubbed ecocrip But How Familiar-Strange / Your Voice and Presence Dr Siriol McAvoy on how forgotten names resonate in contemporary womens poetry in Wales Unpicking the Locks Tracey Rhys on how writing poetry with her autistic son helps him express his emotional experiences and continues to challenge neurotypical assumptions Where Im Coming From Durre Shahwar on how her open mic series empowers BAME writers in Wales
Just a Woman with Nothing on her Skin Zo Brigley discusses Georgia OKeeffe and the politics of looking, in her new poetry collection, Hand and Skull
Emily Blewitt is the author of This Is Not A Rescue (Seren Books, 2017) and the poetry submissions editor for the New Welsh Reader. She has published poetry in the Rialto, Poetry Walkes, Ambit, and The North, among others, and was Highly Commended in the 2016 Forward Prizes. Emily has appeared at Hay Festival, on Radio 4, and has collaborated with other writers and artists on the Weird and Wonderful Wales project. She is the recipient of a Literature Wales bursary, and is currently working on her second collection of poetry. She has a PhD in English Literature from Cardiff University, where she specialised in poetic representations of pregnancy in contemporary and nineteenth-century womens writing. Emily lives in Bridgend with her husband, Greg, and their fat black-and-white cat, Ozymandias (Ozzie).
Gavin Goodwin was born in Newport, Gwent. His first pamphlet, Estate Fragments, was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in 2014. His second, Blue Rain, was a winner of the 2017 Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Prize. He lectures in English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, and is a co-ordinator of Contempo (The Centre for Contemporary Poetry).
Dan Anthony teaches at Cardiff Metropolitan Universitys School of Education and Social Policy. His latest novel is The Last Big One, from Gomer.
Rebecca Parfitt is a writer living in the Llynfi Valley with her partner and baby daughter. Her debut poetry collection, The Days After, was published widely and she was shortlisted for the Ink, Sweat & Tears pamphlet competition in 2017 for a collection centred around baby loss. She is a recipient of the Hay Festival Writers at Work residency. Her short story collection was shortlisted by the Cinnamon press debut fiction competition in 2018.
Abeer Ameer is originally from Iraq, but was made in England like the blue Cortina. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Planet, The Interpreters House, Tears in the Fence, Envoi, Prole, and LossLit. She is currently working on a collection of poems based on personal stories from Iraq.
Maria Apichellas book, Psalmody, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year and the Forward Prize, First Collection in 2017. This poem is from a collection-in-progress about Kyffin Williams.
Amy Wack recently published work in Long Poem Magazine and The Pacific Review.
Paul Henry is the author of nine books of verse. Originally a songwriter, he has performed his poems and songs at the literary and music festivals in Europe, Asia and the USA. A popular Creative Writing tutor, he has presented arts programmes for BBC Radio Wales, Radio 3 and Radio 4. His latest collection is The Glass Aisle, published by Seren.
Tracey Rhys poetry pamphlet, Teaching a Bird to Sing, featured in the TLS as part of the judges round-up of favourites from the Michael Marks Award submissions for 2017. She collaborates with Winterlight Theatre, her poetry was exhibited at the Senedd for Autism Awareness Month and she is published in journals. She is currently working on her next poetry collection.
Miranda Barnes is a poet originally from the USA but resident in Britain since 2013. She has had poems published in journals and anthologies in both the USA and the UK, with poems appearing or forthcoming in Riggwelter, The Compass, Under the Radar, The Interpreters House, Confingo, Lighthouse Journal, One, and NOON: Journal of the Short Poem. Work published in recent anthologies include the PLAY Anthology (published by the Broadsheet) and erbacce-press NHS anthology.
Francesca Bratton lives in York and has work forthcoming or published in Agenda, Strix, Tenebrae, Eborakon, the Oxonian Review, and The Scores. Her essay Hart Crane in Greenwich Village, was recently published by Wild Court.
KS Moore is a Welsh poet based in Ireland. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Lonely Crowd, Cardiff Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Stinging Fly, Southword and Crannog. Work is upcoming in Boyne Berries magazine. ksmoore.com. I trust your way.
Helen Mort is a five-times winner of the Foyle Young Poets award, received an Eric Gregory Award from The Society of Authors in 2007 and won the Manchester Poetry Prize Young Writer Prize in 2008. In 2010, she became the youngest ever poet-in-residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.
This is a preview poem from Professor Deryn Rees-Jones latest collection,Erato, due from Seren in June. Julia Damassa was an actor and theatre director with whom the poem studied in Bangor in the 1980s. Deryns new book about the Portuguese artist, Paula Rego: The Art of Story is due from Thames and Hudson in November.
Rhys Milsom has published two collections of poetry, Amnesia (Onion Custard, 2015; reprinted by Accent Press 2016) and Transition (Accent Press, 2016). He was selected as a Writer at Work at Hay Festival in 2016 and 2017. He was a winner in the TSS International Writers Award, has read at festivals including Hay Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Merthyr Festival, Llandeilo Literature Festival and at other events all over the UK. I also run and curate the literature and art night, Milieu, based in Cardiff.
This is a preview from Kittie Belltrees collection, Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks, forthcoming from Parthian this autumn. This collection uncovers the haunting, unspoken effects of trauma within and against family and interpersonal relationships, and was written with the support of Literature Wales Writer Development Mentoring Scheme. This poem was highly commended in the Penfro Poetry Competitions 2015 and 2016.
Rachel Carney has had poems published in magazines and journals including Ink Sweat and Tears, The High Window, The Ekphrastic Review, The Open Mouse, Sarasvati and the Wales Haiku Journal. createdtoread.com
Polly Atkin lives in Cumbria. Her first collection, Basic Nest Architecture, was published by Seren in 2017. An extract from this was awarded New Writing Norths Andrew Waterhouse Prize in 2014 for reflect[ ing] a strong sense of place or the natural environment. Her first pamphlet, bone song (Aussteiger, 2008) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award, 2009, and second, Shadow Dispatches (Seren, 2013), won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize, 2012. Her third pamphlet, With Invisible Rain (New Walk Press: 2018), draws on found texts, including Dorothy Wordsworths late journals, to articulate pain. She has taught English and Creative Writing at QMUL, Lancaster University, and the Universities of Cumbria and Strathclyde. She is a Penguin Random House WriteNow mentee for a non-fiction book reflecting on place, belonging and living with chronic illness.
Siriol McAvoy is a researcher and writer based in Cardiff, specialising in Welsh Writing in English and experimental womens writing of the twentieth century. She carried out her PhD in Cardiff University on Virginia Woolf and Lynette Roberts and has recently edited a book of essays on the Argentine-Welsh writer (forthcoming from University of Wales Press in 2019). She teaches gender studies and literature in the Department of Continuing Education at Cardiff University, and writes her own poetry, too.
Durre Shahwar is a writer and a creative practitioner whose work explores social and cultural issues, race, identity, intersectionality, and mental health. Durre has been published in various places most prominently in Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (Dead Ink Books, 2017). Durre is currently doing a PhD in creative Writing at Cardiff University. Her thesis, which she hopes will become her first book, is on South Asian identities in Welsh writing in English. She is part of Hay festival Writers at Work, BBC Writersroom Wales, and is an Associate Editor for Wales Arts Review.
Zo Brigley is Assistant Professor in English and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. She has three poetry collections from Bloodaxe: The Secret, Conquest, and Hand & Skull, the latter out in the summer of 2019. She has a collection of nonfiction essays forthcoming from Parthian, Notes from a Swing State, and she co-edited the volume, Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (Routledge). -- *New Welsh Review*
