Editor Jonathan Edwards interviews former guest editor of Poetry Wales Deryn Rees-Jones whose collection Erato (Seren, 2019) is shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2020. JE: Huge congratulations on being shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year. How does it feel to be shortlisted? Is it especially important to you to be recognised…
Category: Interviews
WBOTY 2020 Shortlist Poets: Interview with Zoë Skoulding
Editor Jonathan Edwards interviews Zoë Skoulding, former Poetry Wales editor and shortlisted poet in Literature Wales’ Wales Book of the Year 2020.
WBOTY 2020 Shortlist Poets: Interview with Jeremy Over
Editor Jonathan Edwards interviews Jeremy Over, shortlisted poet for Wales Book of the Year 2020.
Natalie Ann Holborow: How I write a poem
When I take my place in front of my laptop at four in the morning (disgusting hour of the day if it’s for work, yet a sublime hour for languishing in that haze of soporific half-dreaming), I rarely arrive with a solid plan.
Briony Collins and the poems that inspire her
I was very lucky growing up, but not in the way you might imagine. My mother died when I was five and the precise circumstances of her death are still a mystery. When my father wasn’t drowning his grief, he was masking it in anger. My brother and I were emotionally stunted for a long…
Peter Knaggs on the poems that inspire him
Vasko I’ve got it in my hand now, the hefty slab of it, Vasko Popa Complete Poems and I thought I’d have a go at saying summat about it. Now, I love Popa and over the last year he has been the biggest influence over my work. At a fundamental level Popa has altered my…
Elizabeth Porter on the poems that inspire her
When I was a child there was something called ‘Chip Club’ – a leaflet given out at school once or twice a year, from which we could order books. I was lucky, my mum always bought me a book, and in 1974 I chose 100+ American Poems, edited by Paul Molloy. Why? Maybe for the…
Di Slaney on the 10 poems that inspire her
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupry I’ve been asked to answer an excellent question about poems, books or poets who have influenced me, and…
Ben Bransfield on the poems that inspire him
Another guardian of the soul for me is Mary Oliver, who I always turn to when I need a quiet jolt back into my ‘one wild and precious life’