Happy Father’s Day

To all Dads, Grandads and those soon-to-be: we wish you a very happy Father’s Day. In celebration, we are happy to announce that all orders placed on our website in the next week will come with a complimentary ‘Dad joke’ to add to your collection.

Mums, children, friends – we are so sorry. Because surely Dad won’t be able to resist treating himself to Mike Rees’ fascinating Men Who Played the Game, which pays tribute to sportsmen who fought in the Great War. He certainly won’t be able to stop himself from getting a copy of Lloyd Jones’ magnificent, newly back-in-print novel, Mr Vogel. And you can try, but we highly doubt you’ll be able to stop Dad from indulging in a little musical nostalgia with Peter Finch’s personal history of rock and pop: The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back.

 

 

So go on Dads, treat yourself.

 

Three Poems for World Poetry Day

In celebration of World Poetry Day, we are featuring three poems by Seren poets, which you can read below.

Coinciding with the start of Spring, World Poetry Day is the perfect opportunity for us to brighten up your week with some of our favourite poems. It has been dreadfully difficult to narrow it down, but we hope you enjoy our selections: poems from Kim Moore, Paul Henry, and Rhian Edwards.

 

 

Kim Moore: ‘And the Soul’
Taken from Kim Moore’s outstanding debut, The Art of Falling – which was shortlisted for the Cumbria/Lakeland Book of the Year – ‘And the Soul’ considers the animalistic nature of the soul, be it domestic (‘And if it be a cat, find some people/ to ignore’) or primal.

 

And the Soul
And the soul, if she is to know
herself, must look into the soul…
– Plato

And the soul, if she is to know herself
must look into the soul and find
what kind of beast is hiding.

And if it be a horse, open up the gate
and let it run. And if it be a rabbit
give it sand dunes to disappear in.

And if it be a swan, create a mirror image,
give it water. And if it be a badger
grow a sloping woodland in your heart.

And if it be a tick, let the blood flow
until it’s sated. And if it be a fish
there must be a river and a mountain.

And if it be a cat, find some people
to ignore, but if it be a wolf,
you’ll know from its restless way

of moving, if it be a wolf,
throw back your head
and let it howl.

 

 

Paul Henry: ‘Moving In’
This poem is taken from Boy Running, Paul Henry’s latest collection, which reached the shortlist for the Wales Book of the Year Poetry Award (2016). Paul is currently touring with Stornoway singer-songwriter Brian Briggs as they perform their collaborative work, The Glass Aisle – a haunting piece which crosses the borders between poem and song lyric. Find the full list of events here.

 

Moving In
I cannot see the flowers at my feet…
Keats – ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’

They look and wonder what they’re doing here,
those who’ve moved with me across the years –
Dylan Thomas, Picasso, Nightingale Ann,
Goble, David Trevorrow, young Fanny Brawne…
all strewn about this flat where I hide.
(Did I dream, last night, of a tide
laying its artefacts on sand?) They stare
but do not judge, or change, or care.

Dylan’s just opened Manhattan’s cigar box.
‘Try one,’ he says, ‘before you die. Fuck books.’
Pablo’s still pushing against his pane.
He listens for a nightingale in vain.
Goble tilts back in his top hat.
He and Trevorrow could not have shared a flat
but I loved them both, and Fanny Brawne.
There are crows on my roof. The light has gone.

 

 

Rhian Edwards: ‘The Universal Doodle’
Taken from Rhian Edwards’ new poetry pamphlet, Brood, ‘The Universal Doodle’ carries on the pamphlet’s ever-present theme of birds by musing on the appearance of a murmuration cloud of starlings. Keep an eye on our website, as numerous launch events are on the horizon – and we would love for you to celebrate with us.

 

The Universal Doodle

A scattering corralled, lassoed
into the universal doodle of birds.
A mutable speech bubble

of pondering ‘m’s. This is the bombast
of starlings as they corkscrew the sky.
Each twist and fold is summarised

to a simile like iron filings,
flocked and flung across the sky
by the metaphorical whims of a magnet.

Can you hear the pathetic fallacy?
The siren song of a metal’s hum
crooning behind clouds, a bit like a God.

 

 

We hope you enjoyed our World Poetry Day selection. If it has inspired you to expand your poetry collection, then you can find our full list of Seren poetry books here.

 

A literary Mother’s Day Gift: the Writing Motherhood anthology

Today we welcome the arrival of Writing Motherhood, a creative anthology of poetry, interviews and essays by established writers, edited by Carolyn Jess-Cooke.

The perfect literary gift for Mother’s Day, Writing Motherhood explores the relationship between creativity and motherhood, with contributions from writers such as Carol Ann Duffy, Sharon Olds and Hollie McNish. Until Sunday 26 March, you can buy Mum her copy at 30% off, direct from the Seren website.

‘This is a truly inspiring collection, all the more so for its wit and its grit, its poetry and its honesty; here we have women producing ‘good art’ despite – and often  because of – ‘the pram in the hall.’ – Shelley Day

Read a free excerpt from Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s Introduction, below.

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INTRODUCTION

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
– Cyril Connolly

This book presents a selection of the most important contemporary
writing by women on the tensions between motherhood
and writing.
Cyril Connolly wrote about the ‘pram in the hall’ in his 1938
book Enemies of Promise, yet his caveat is directed at men (he took
it as given that women create babies, not art). Nonetheless, the
quote is still in use to capture those devastating effects brought to
artistic creation by a new baby. I’m not alone when I admit the
arrival of my first child felt like stepping inside a whirlwind. I had
plenty to worry about – SIDS, whether she was gaining enough
weight, whether we could afford maternity leave, etc. – but I do
remember that among my worries was a serious concern that I
might never be able to write again. My brain felt completely
scrambled. I could barely construct a text message for weeks,
months. Time was disjointed. It seemed to take an inordinate
amount of time to do even the smallest task. I remember thinking,
over and over, why did nobody tell me how hard this is? After the birth
of my son, however, writing proved effective in pushing back the
darkness of postnatal depression, and also inspired a new direction
in my creative practice; I had always thought I would only
ever write poetry, but the problem-solving, immersive elements of
narrative proved much more potent in batting back depression.
After the births of our third and fourth children, let’s just say that
I became a bit more creative in how I managed my time.
PUBLISHING MOTHERHOOD

In 2014, Arts Council England funded my Writing Motherhood
project to tour literary festivals in the UK to discuss the impact of
motherhood on women’s writing. I had read a number of reports
and articles that claimed the key to literary success was childlessness,
or for a woman to have just one child, or at least to bear in
mind that each child ‘costs’ a female writer four books. None of
these reports aimed their caveats at men. I became curious – and
not a little dismayed – by the idealization of motherhood, and by
the casual sexism that was prevalent and unchallenged in discourses
about motherhood. I set up the Writing Motherhood
project because I wanted to empower mothers and to encourage
them to talk about their experiences. Although the assumption
about mothers and writing was that we just didn’t have the time
or inclination (we’re all too busy dealing with that pram in the
hallway!), I perceived that other forces were at work, prohibiting
women’s writing from making it into the public sphere and/or
being perceived as good literature.

 

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A few highlights from the kalaidescope of female experience featured here are Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s interview with Sharon Olds (where she discusses her famous rejection by a US literary magazine for writing about her children), excerpts from Hollie McNish’s motherhood diary, and Carol Ann Duffy’s beautiful portrait of being and having a daughter. This is a poignant and beautiful book celebrating motherhood, recognising it not as the ‘enemy of good art’, but often as its inspiration.

Writing Motherhood: 30% off until Mother’s Day (26 March). Order your copy now

 

Seren’s women on the books that have inspired us

To mark International Women’s Day 2017, Seren’s female staff have come together to shine the spotlight on the books that have inspired us. Countless works of literature written by female writers have changed the world; the few mentioned here have personally changed us.

Sunshine, Melissa Lee-Houghton (Penned in the Margins, 2016)
Suggested by Rebecca Parfitt, Editorial Assistant for Poetry Wales

“It both shocked and enthralled me in equal measure. Here is a poet laying her soul and body bare for all to see and its as uncomfortable as it is beautiful. Her poems have an energy that crackles on the page and her verse often long and sprawling as to almost seem unkempt. A truly authentic and honest contemporary female voice.”

 

A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride (Galley Beggar Press, 2013)
Suggested by Rosie Johns, Marketing & Communications Officer

“Girlhood, growth and sexuality – this book is uncompromising in its depiction of the protagonist’s agonising journey through all of these. After puberty, she is seen by the men in her life (including her uncle) as a simply sexual thing. In reality she is fragmented, transgressive, troubled. There is nothing toned-down or dishonest about this book which, sadly, might explain the author’s staggering 9-year search for a publisher.”

 

Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer
Suggested by Amy Wack, Poetry Editor

“I’m a fan of this book by Greer, a scholarly and provocative imaginary life of Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife. Greer constructs a plausible and sometimes unexpected Elizabethan England based mostly on her research sifting the actual records from Stratford at the time. I know Greer can be wrong-headed and stubbornly persistent, but I always appreciate that her goal is to get people to think, to argue back, to defy received opinions!”

 

 

International Women’s Day has been observed since the early 1900s, and commemorates the moment for women’s rights. The day is also an opportunity to celebrate women’s achievements. This year the campaign centres around calling people to #BeBoldForChange – to help forge a better working world, and a more gender-inclusive world. Join in and be bold.

Seren’s Top Ten Literary Romances

Valentine’s Day needn’t be a cause for stress when there are so many great literary romances to get lost in. Happy ending or otherwise, love in literature is beautiful and intense – the perfect distraction on this much-maligned day of devotion. Here are the Seren team’s top ten literary romances – in no particular order.

1. Jayne Eyre and Edward Rochester – Jayne Eyre
   Unassuming and lacking in contemporary beauty, Jayne is perhaps not the convential heroine figure, yet her honesty and intelligence captures our hearts as well as that of wealthy Edward Rochester, whose impulsiveness and secrecy derails their budding romance. Rekindled much later after great suffering, their love seems all the more pure.
2. Claire Abshire and Henry DeTamble – The Time Traveler’s Wife
   ‘I am at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all’. Claire and Henry’s romance is unconvential and at times agonising, but each moment time-travelling Henry is brought back to Claire is cherished by both.
3. Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley – Emma
   Like a slow burn, Emma’s imperceptible love grows out of friendship for the frank and critical Mr Knightly – the only character whose genuine concern and care for Emma is strong enough to prompt such well-meaning rebukes. Their romance is compassionate and selfless, and each improves the other through their genuine affection.
4. Catherine Ernshaw and Heathcliff – Wuthering Heights
   Both strong, wild and passionate, Catherine and Heathcliffe fall prey to an obsessive kind of love, all-consuming in its intensity, to the ruin of both. Heathcliff is not our typical romantic hero – his coarse brutality turning him into something monstrous – yet his enduring love for Catherine, which dominates him even after her death, makes for a captivating and unforgettable story.
5. Beatrice and Benedick – Much Ado About Nothing
   The will-they-won’t-they romance between Beatrice and Benedick begins with the two on equal footing – both clever, witty and utterly opposed to marriage. Throughout the play they continue to be evenly matched,  their heated linguistic duels blossoming into love. Each has the power to turn the other into the best (or worst) version of themselves, and the “merry war” of witty insults between Beatrice and Benedick ends with a romance we will remember always.
6. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew – One Day
   This much-loved contemporary romance opens with Emma and Dexter’s one-night-stand, which unbeknownst to both characters will define the tragectory of their lives. Though ultimately tragic, the love between Emma and Dexter endures over decades of separation, and is captivating in its intensity.
7. Hazel Lancaster and Augustus Waters – The Fault in Our Stars
   A short and hearbreaking romance, Hazel and Augustus stole hearts in the book and on the big screen as we followed them in their battles against cancer, love and loss. Embodying Tennyson’s phrase, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”, the story ends with neither character regretting having pursued their doomed relationship.
8. Pip and Estella – Great Expectations
   Arguably one of Dickens’ strongest female characters, Estrella is cold and cruel to Pip as a child, rejecting the notion of romance and warning him to stay away from her. Pip, passionately in love, continues to pursue Estrella even after her marriage to the repugnant Drummle, and as the novel draws to a close, we are teased with the notion that Pip and Estella may finally be united.
9. Margaret Hale and John Thornton – North and South
   An intelligent and wealthy mill owner, Mr Thornton represents all that genteel Margaret Hale is prejudiced against. He comes to love Margaret both because and in spite of her pride, and this passionate love persists even after she refuses his preposal and he comes to (wrongly) believe she has another lover. Margaret’s prejudices against the North and about social class slowly alter and when re-introduced to Thornton much later, the two finally declare their love.
10. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy – Pride and Prejudice
    How could we leave off this most famous of literary romances? Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy both have their flaws – quick to jump to conclusions, Elizabeth misjudges Darcy from the start and he, falling prey to his pride, looks down upon her socially inferior family. Through hatred, to begruding respect and finally love, the two overcome their initial failings, and eventually embark upon a joyous marriage.

 

We hope you enjoyed this short list of great literary romances – though there are plenty more out there we haven’t mentioned. Happy Valentine’s Day, book lovers!

And before we go, a couple of honorary mentions from the Seren list:

Sophia and Hajo – Dark Mermaids
In Sophia’s struggles to investigate her friend’s murder and come to terms with her own abusive childhood as a young swimming star, fellow police officer Hajo begins as a wishful fantasy, his thick dark curly hair something coveted from a distance. But by the novel’s close, we see the two united, Sophia’s torment dulled by the reciprocated feelings from one whose love is patient, gentle, and pure.

Christine and The Phantom – Masque
In her pursuit of artistic perfection, young opera singer Christine encounters the Phantom, whose mentorship and murderous control of the theatre propel her to new heights. Much unlike Gaston Leroux’s original story, in Masque the Phantom is a complex character with great emotional depth, and ultimately Christine comes to recognise, despite his monstrous faults and physical deformity, that she admires and loves him.

 

 

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Win a copy of Significance, Jo Mazelis’ Jerwood Prize-winning novel

Enter our giveaway to win a copy of Jo Mazelis’ award-winning novel, Significance.

To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st March:
https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

Significance was a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winner, 2015. Up for grabs in this giveaway is a copy of the new edition of the book, printed to commemorate the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered announcement.

About Significance:
Lucy Swann is trying on a new life. She’s cut and dyed her hair and bought new clothes, but she’s only got as far as a small town in northern France when her flight is violently cut short. When Inspector Vivier and his handsome assistant Sabine Pelat begin their investigation, the chance encounters of her last days take on a new significance.
Lucy’s death, like a stone thrown into a pool, sends out far-reaching ripples, altering the lives of people who never knew her as well as those of her loved ones back home.

Quite unlike any literary crime novel you will have read before, Significance takes the chance encounters of Lucy Swann’s last days and examines the characters she meets so fleetingly in unnerving detail. This is a murder mystery where the murder remains backstage, overshadowed by the many intermingling lives Lucy has brushed so briefly against.

 

The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random from all our email subscribers on 1st March 2017, so make sure you sign up to Seren News before this deadline to be in with a chance of winning.

Feeling generous? Why not invite your friends to enter, by signing up using the link below:
http://serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

 

Top of the Non-Fiction: what to buy in the half price sale

There’s still time to take advantage of our big January sale – which ends midnight, Friday 13th (not such an unlucky day, after all!)
All our books are half price, and that includes a gloriously diverse range of non-fiction: everything from biography to art, history to criticism. Here we pick a few of our favourites.

The Girl who Lived on Air by Stephen Wade examines the strange story of Sarah Jacob, ‘the Welsh fasting girl’. Though not the first anorexic, she was arguably the first to cause a national furore, and was made to be the centre of a lucrative and also media-hungry ‘spin’ on the nineteenth century nexus of knowledge between science and superstition, folk-belief and religious asceticism. Stephen Wade covers new ground in examining the medical issues surrounding the case, the legal complexities, the prison life of Sarah’s parents, and the significance of folklore and superstition.
Alun Lewis biographer John Pikoulis covers new ground in Alun, Gweno & Freda, which examines Lewis’ life and writing through the particular prism of his relationships with his wife, Gweno, and Freda Aykroyd, an ex-patriot in India whose house provided respite for British officers on leave. The book argues that Lewis’s charged relationships with these two women were the key to both his writing and his mental health, and goes on to explore the circumstances surrounding Lewis’ sudden death, and weigh into the ongoing debate over whether it was accidental, or suicide.
Losing Israel by Jasmine Donahaye is more than biography. This moving and honest memoir, which won the Wales Book of the Year, Non-Fiction Category (2016), recounts the author’s struggles with identity and history after she stumbles upon the collusion of her family in the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. Biography, travel writing and birdwatching are all weaved together in this fascinating re-evaluation of memory, family and cultural identity.
Robert Minhinnick’s Watching the Fire Eater, newly back in stock, takes us from Copacabana to urban Yorkshire, from New Mexico to a Welsh funfair, from The Netherlands to the Clare coast. Minhinnick’s essays cover a variety of subjects – sunbathing, third world poverty, the demise of Margaret Thatcher, to name a few – but at the core this is a vivid series of attempts to strip away the exhausted mythologies of the writer’s own country and the increasingly-packaged places he visits.
The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back is Peter Finch’s serenade to rock and popular music, and an infectiously nostalgic trip from the 1950s onwards that is guaranteed to enthrall music lovers. From an old valve radio playing in the Cardiff suburbs in the ’50s to live music today in America and beyond, Peter Finch tours countries and decades to illustrate how rock and pop has evolved, giving us sharp-eyed accounts of gigs from Champion Jack Dupree to the Garth Mountain Boys, visits to musical shrines and theme parks – Dollywood, Grand Ole Opry, Graceland, Stax – and music, lots and lots of music.

 

See our full Non-Fiction list on the Seren website, and hurry – sale ends midnight, Friday 13 January.

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Poetry Picks: what to buy in the half price sale

If your bookshelves are looking a bit bare (or even if they’re full to bursting – who are we to judge?) then we hope our half price sale helps you discover new and intriguing collections to add to your ‘must read’ pile.

Until midnight this Friday (13th January), all books on the Seren website are 50% off. This includes hundreds of poetry books – and in an effort to help you with your decision-making, we’ve picked out a few of our favourites.

Carrie Etter’s Imagined Sons is visceral and emotionally intense, a reflection on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. These haunting, psalm-like prose poems are bursting with courage and insight. She describes possible encounters with this son, now in his late twenties, expressing how ‘sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering’. These poems leave a mark upon the reader, and explore with profound skill the aching agony of displaced motherhood.
The Museum of Disappearing Sounds by Zoë Skoulding is a collection of densely intellectual poems, experimental, rich and resonant. Rather than aspiring to reach beyond language, these poems focus on the spaces that words occupy, looking at how ‘a sentence reverses itself between two pairs of eyes’ or noting ‘the distance drifted by a word shaken loose from border controls’. Exploratory and alive to the senses, these poems create new perspectives on language and the world in which it exists.
Jonathan Edwards’ My Family and Other Superheroes is (in contrast) utterly joyful and hilarious, and introduces the reader to a mishmash of odd characters, including Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo. Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, Jonathan Edwards’ debut has charmed the masses, and is a must-read – if you haven’t already.
Kim Moore’s The Art of Falling twists and manipulates the idea of falling into an abundance of meanings, and weaves this central theme alongside vivid and unabashedly realistic descriptions of the North and ‘My People’: ‘who swear without knowing they are swearing… scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers’. Blisteringly raw poems appear in the central sequence, ‘How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping’: the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, not designed to soothe or beguile. Midnight, Dhaka is the debut collection by Mir Mahfuz Ali. As a boy, Mahfuz witnessed atrocities and writes about them with a searing directness in poems like ‘My Salma’: ‘They brought Salma into the yard, / asked me to watch how they would explode / a bullet into her’. His trauma becomes transformative, and his poetry the key to unlocking memories of a childhood that are rich in nuance, gorgeous in detail and evocative of a beautiful country. Influenced by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), as well as modern British poets, Mahfuz brings his own unique voice in these poems, which celebrate the human capacity for love, survival and renewal.

 

See our full Poetry list on the Seren website, and hurry – sale ends midnight, Friday 13 January.

Seren Advent Calendar: 24 days of offers

Here’s a special Seren advent calendar– instead of chocolate, you’ll find 24 fantastic book offers to enjoy.

Each day in December we’ll reveal a different book, available half price for one day only. We’ll have a range of poetry, fiction, biography, art, photography and Welsh interest titles included, so there are sure to be surprises to delight everyone.

We’ll be updating this blog post every day with the latest offer, so keep your eyes peeled!

1st December: 50% off Wales’ Best One Hundred Churches
2nd December: 50% off Masque
3rd December: 50% off Leslie Norris: The Complete Poems
4th December: 50% off Star-Shot
5th December: 50% off Losing Israel
6th December: 50% off Significance
7th December: 50% off A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems
8th December: 50% off Writing the Picture
9th December: 50% off The Immigration Handbook
10th December: 50% off American Sycamore
11th December: 50% off The Road to Zagora
12th December: 50% off House of Small Absences
13th December: 50% off Borderlands
14th December: 50% off Limestone Man
15th December: 50% off A Boat Called Annalise
16th December: 50% off The Harp in Wales
17th December: 50% off Morlais
18th December: 50% off Newspaper Taxis: Poetry After The Beatles
19th December: 50% off Men Who Played the Game
20th December: 50% off Swimming on Dry Land
21st December: 50% off Playing House
22nd December: 50% off The Rivalry of Flowers

23rd December: 50% off the New Stories from the Mabinogion complete signed box set
£100   £50
In New Stories from the Mabinogion ten great authors have taken the Celtic myth cycle as a starting point to give us masterly re-workings with a modern twist in a series both various and wonderful. This box set contains all ten contemporary tales, signed by the authors – Owen Sheers, Gwyneth Lewis, Horatio Clare, Cynan Jones, Niall Griffiths, Russell Celyn Jones, Tishani Doshi, Fflur Dafydd, Lloyd Jones and Trezza Azzopardi.

 

Each offer ends at midnight on the specified day.

 

 

 

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Win a signed copy of Wild Places by Iolo Williams

Show us your favourite nature place in Wales win a copy of Iolo Williams’ new guide book, Wild Places: Wales’ Top 40 Nature Sites.

We’re giving away a signed copy of Wild Places, Iolo Williams’ stunning new guide to Wales’ best wildlife and nature sites. All you have to do to win is head to Twitter and tell us your top nature place.

Follow us (@SerenBooks) and use the hashtag #WildPlacesWales to tell us where you think tops the list of Wales’ best wild places. Add a photo if you can! We’ll pick the winner on 16th December – our favourite comment will take the prize.

We’ve already had some great responses – here are a few of the places chosen so far…

The view from my village #WildPlaces #Wales #BlackMountains pic.twitter.com/OG6VFnvMvy

— Diana H Boughton (@dhboughton) November 21, 2016

Cadair Idris! @SerenBooks @birdsinwales pic.twitter.com/DhbRMrFqmK

— Laura Truelove (@lauratruelove) November 16, 2016

@SerenBooks Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, very scenic, lots of wildlife & a medieval village to explore pic.twitter.com/jp0rT3P0CM

— Rosie Johns (@rosiekaj) November 16, 2016

 

Can you think of an even better wild place in Wales? If so, tell us now and you’ll be in the running to win this fantastic new book, signed by the author.

 

Entries close 16/12/16. Winner will be chosen from all Twitter comments. Prize cannot be exchanged or substituted.