Interview by Beth Mcaulay “I’m always thinking about who gets to speak and be listened to, and who gets silenced” valley burn in the place where I’m from if you really like animals as a kid someone might kindly suggest well when you grow up, love, you could work in a pet shop no one would think of thinking you might study to become a vet it’s not that kind of place we’re not those kinds of people in the place where I’m from if you like writing, maybe one day you could get a job on the local paper no one has an uncle pulling strings to get you Spectating for the summer or a lonely rich aunt ..read more

Photo credit: Stig Hjelmgaard | by Lynne Hjelmgaard “When I attempted to put my feelings on paper it became clear that it would be a long, slow process with hard work and determination at its core” I wasn’t very old when I was in the living room at home, my parents were having an argument with my older sister. I don’t remember what it was about, but I had an overwhelming feeling that I was observing them from afar. How vulnerable and uncertain we were. Naturally, as a child I forgot about this experience, but that awareness and otherness, those feelings of separation and loneliness have never ..read more

Interview by Beth Mcauley “If you let your characters speak, you can give them enough rope to hang themselves: they reveal their own nature without the narrator having to comment; you’re showing and not telling” Backchat I help to clear the grass of dogs’ mess, glass and the odd syringe. We walk the pitch in a line like the police at a murder scene. From a Portakabin with metal shutters, the teams emerge. The sky can’t be bothered. The pitch’s heavy with dew that’ll mark the first skirmishes, dribbles and sliding tackles. My lad’s warming his hands down his Skins or trying for a top bin or c ..read more

Photo credit: MARIEPALBOM PHOTOGRAPHY | Interview by Beth Mcaulay “You might say that writing this poem was an act of unwinding” The Invention of Rope In the dark, she measures a length, pulls until it breaks. The child beside her is patient, uncertain, blinks as she winds it twice around his wrist, loose enough, tight. She ties a knot, the ball in her pocket. I’ll keep the rest here until you return, she says. There. You are safe. In the morning, she lets the child go. The woollen loop on his wrist is a compass to circle, twisting around. It smells of sheep, grass, home. Rope binds what m ..read more

By Tim Relf “Time is a necessary engine in poetry“ From honing your editing skills and making reading lists to finding inspiration and ‘receiving poems on your senses’, four leading writers share some gems of advice with Poetry Wales Try to see editing as a joy not a penance, says Iris Anne Lewis. “For me, editing is writing,” says Iris, who was highly commended in the 2022 Wales Poetry Award. “I find it a rewarding part of the creative process and it allows me to really think about the words – every single one of which has to earn its place. I’ve learnt not to be afraid to wield t ..read more

Interview by Zoë Brigley “It seems to me that all language grows out of the dirt, the shapes of hills, the mud of the fields and barks of trees” Split Tongues Oh yes. Indeed. If you split a starling’s tongue with a silver sixpence the bird can be taught to speak more impressively. Anon. 16th Century I was born into the music of Somerset. The music of udders & milk, herons & rhynes. Our mouths were mirrors of earth. Thick with it. Ridged and gorged with it. I couldn't wait to get away. Please, I said can I go to university? I might as well have said Mars or Pluto. Yes, they said ..read more

Join us on Tuesday 26th March 2024 for an evening of live poetry! To coincide with the launch of our Spring 2024 issue, Poetry Wales 59.3, we are excited to announce an evening of live poetry at one of our favourite venues in Cardiff Hosted by Poetry Wales Editor Zoë Brigley, with readings from: Poetry Wales 59.3 Contributing Editor Taylor Edmonds Poetry Wales 59.3 Contributor Jeremy Dixon Poetry Wales 59.3 Contributor Natasha Gauthier Poetry Wales 59.3 Contributor Hilary Watson Poetry Wales 59.2 Contributor Bethany Handley Poetry Wales Committee Chair Taz Rahman Poetry Wales 60.1 (Summer 202 ..read more

Listed for the Dylan Thomas Award 2024, writer, poet and artist JOSHUA JONES describes the importance of a phone box that became a library in Roath, Cardiff On the streetside entrance to Roath Pleasure Gardens, and at one end of what’s colloquially referred to as ‘The Rec’, is a telephone box. It’s one of those bright red public kiosks, built to withstand all weather, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in the 1920s. Synonymous with a Britain of a bygone era, they are mostly consigned to streetside relics. This specific one is an unassuming telephone box, but for many years, it also contained a pu ..read more

Photo credit: Miguel Ruiz | Interview by Zoë Brigley “I love her cinematic urgency, like a shape-shifting spotlight that never settles on its subject” this is a 16-mm film of seven minutes in which no words are spoken No words, at least not in the viewer’s mind, which swivels on its invisible axis. The viewer cannot see well most of the time. She listens, yes. She prefers listening and breathing. The air is like any other – quietly cold and ensnared. The first frame is a portrait. We don’t want it to change from here. That’s what we hate about all film – how it shifts, while forcing us to ..read more

Photo credit: Peter McGoran | Interview by Zoë Brigley “All of the images had come together and started to work on each other, and then that word seemed a little like a lightbulb that could help illuminate the poem, sort of let one question fall across it, maybe creating a sort of (albeit fragmented and nebulous) whole” poem for an imaginary marriage If I had a ring what would it sound like when dropped at the side of the sink, the exquisite risk of it because only after I noticed I had written asleep rather than love did I recognise two states customarily felt as falling I have stopped ..read more