“Now we are at the fifty-fifth volume, summer 2019, and this is my last issue as editor.”
Rosemarie Corlett on how she writes a poem
“I don’t follow a skeleton, or pad out a structure, rather the poem emerges like a road lit by headlights.” I never know what a poem will be about when I start writing it. And if it’s a successful poem, I won’t know what it’s about once it’s finished. I write line by line, and…
10 Unmissable Poems from the last 5 years (Part 3 of 5)
See our third instalment of our top ten unmissable poems published in Poetry Wales from the last 5 years. To celebrate 55 years of publishing poetry, every Friday we’ll be releasing two poems from the list, with our final post including a downloadable PDF edition of the poems. The ten poems in this short collection were…
So Mayer on how they write a poem
“[T]o write, for me, is to fill my mouth with worry. To worry at something: at tooth with tongue; seeking instabilities, gaps and that fleshy give. Feel it, and the anxiety floods in. But you keep fraying at it, a frayed knot: afraid not.” ‘we have filled our mouth with worry, beads.’ — Veronica Forrest-Thomson,…
10 Unmissable Poems from the last 5 years (Part 2 of 5)
Read the second instalment of our top ten unmissable poems published in Poetry Wales from the last 5 years. To celebrate 55 years of publishing poetry, every Friday we’ll be releasing two poems from the list, with our final post including a downloadable PDF edition of the poems. The ten poems in this short collection were…
Jonathan Edwards on how he writes a poem
“Beyond all of them stands time, that vicious git, with its sieve of tiny holes we all want to try and sneak a poem through. But before all those the writer has his own sieve and, let’s face it, most of us have crap sieves for our own work.” In ‘Teaching the Ape to Write…
10 Unmissable Poems from the last 5 years (Part 1 of 5)
Read the first two of our top ten unmissable poems published in Poetry Wales from the last 5 years. To celebrate 55 years of publishing poetry, every Friday we’ll be releasing two poems from the list, with our final post including a downloadable PDF edition of the poems. The ten poems in this short collection were…
Introducing New Poetry Wales Supporter Subscriptions
“Your readership has allowed us to bring contemporary poetry from Welsh and international writers to print for over half a century.” Regular readers of Poetry Wales will be aware we’ve encountered a 30% cut to our funding since 2010. Nia Davies in her editorial for PW 54.3 suggests that while it limits our resources, ‘we…
Rhian Elizabeth on how she writes a poem
“I like how words can fall on the page of a poem, how words look when they are put in funny and wrong places. I like not having the pressure of capital letters and full stops. It feels a bit naughty, a bit cheeky. And I like being cheeky.” I keep saying, whenever I’m asked…