The Seren Poetry Podcast

Welcome to The Seren Poetry Podcast, a series of conversations and readings with Seren poets.

In this edition we speak with poet Rhian Edwards. Rhian Edwards is joint poetry editor at Seren alongside Zoë Brigley, but in this episode, she discusses her second collection The Estate Agent’s Daughter. Rhian Edwards is a winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry. Her debut collection Clueless Dogs won Wales Book of the Year 2013 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2012. The Estate Agent’s Daughter is both powerfully personal, local to her Bridgend birthplace, and performative, born to be read aloud. From the title poem, in which the speaker is reimagined as a surrealist house, to poems about family, relationships and the body, Edwards combines her visceral skill for description with a feminist forthright courage to speak of difficult things.

The podcast is presented by Zoë Brigley

The interviewer is Chris Gregory

Recordings, production, sound design and editing are by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories

Recordings of Zoë Brigley are by Sarah Johnson

This conversation was recorded on location at the Seren office in Bridgend.

You can hear Rhian and her fellow editor Zoë Brigley talking on the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities podcast about their editorship here https://www.buzzsprout.com/411730/11406109-the-seren-poetry-podcast-and-the-sylvia-plath-literary-festival-a-poetry-special-edition

Find out more about Seren and purchase books featured in this podcast by visiting the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/

Follow Seren on social media

Twitter https://twitter.com/SerenBooks

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SerenBooks

Contact them by email at [email protected]

This podcast is produced by Alternative Stories, a spoken word production company specialising in literary podcasts and radio programmes. To find out more about Alternative Stories, follow or hire them please follow the links below

https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories

Contact them by email at [email protected]

Please join us next week for a conversation with Carolyn Jess-Cooke, about her collection We Have to Leave the Earth, which will be released on Thursday 3rd November. Subscribe in your favourite podcast app to have all future editions delivered to your podcast feed the moment they are released.

Don’t forget to leave us a rating or review if you like what you hear.

Welcome to The Seren Poetry Podcast, a series of conversations and readings with Seren poets.

In this edition we speak with poet Rosalind Hudis about her collection Restorations. Rosalind Hudis grew up in Suffolk but now lives in West Wales with her partner and family. A one-time accordion player in a gypsy band, Rosalind now works as a freelance writer, editor, reviewer and tutor.

Restorations is a journey into what it means to preserve – a monument, a moment, a life-story, a poppy. It’s about the hunger to possess and the need to let go. Welding themes from art and history with the contemporary, there are poems about pigments and dictators, glue and glass houses, collections, crinolines, and barometers, and the vagaries of memory itself. Entwined, is a more personal story that tracks the loss of a parent to dementia. Also running through, is a theme of women eroding the straitjacket of gendered roles. Linking all is a play with colour, particularly blue, in all its stages from vital to decayed.

The podcast is presented by Rhian Edwards

The interviewer is Chris Gregory

Recordings, production, sound design and editing are by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories

Recordings of Rhian Edwards are by Sarah Johnson

This conversation was recorded on Zoom. As with all video calls, the sound quality may not always be perfect. but we hope you’ll enjoy listening.

You can find out more about Rosalind’s poetry on her website https://rosalindhudis.wordpress.com/

Find out more about Seren and purchase books featured in this podcast by visiting the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/

Follow Seren on social media

Twitter https://twitter.com/SerenBooks

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SerenBooks

Contact them by email at [email protected]

This podcast is produced by Alternative Stories, a spoken word production company specialising in literary podcasts and radio programmes. To find out more about Alternative Stories, follow or hire them please follow the links below

https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories

Contact them by email [email protected]

Please join us next week for a conversation with Eric Ngalle Charles, about his collection Homelands, which will be released on Thursday 24th November. Subscribe in your favourite podcast app to have all future editions delivered to your podcast feed the moment they are released.

Don’t forget to leave us a review if you like what you hear.

Welcome to The Seren Poetry Podcast, a series of conversations and readings with Seren poets.

In this edition we talk to Judy Brown about her third collection ‘Lairs’. Describing it as the ‘angriest’ of her three books so far, Judy discusses the lair as a place of restriction or a confined space, her residency at Exeter University’s Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, and other underlying themes from the book such as ‘pivotal change’.

Judy Brown is an award-winning poet who has published 3 full collections with Seren and a pamphlet ‘Pillars of Salt’ with Templar Poetry. Judy’s first poetry collection, ‘Loudness’ (2011), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. Her second collection, ‘Crowd Sensations’ (2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Second Collection Prize. Her third collection ‘Lairs’ was published in 2022. Judy now works as a freelance tutor and mentor and gives Poetry Surgeries in London and online for the Poetry Society.

‘Lairs’ is available in bookshops nationwide or from the Seren website https://www.serenbooks.com/book/lairs/

The podcast is presented by Rhian Edwards

The interviewer is Sarah Johnson

The interview recordings are by Sarah Johnson.

Production, sound design and editing are by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories

You can find out more about Judy Brown by visiting her website https://judybrownpoems.wordpress.com or following her on social media @JudyBrown__

Find out more about Seren and purchase books featured in this podcast by visiting the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/

Follow Seren on social media

X https://twitter.com/SerenBooks

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SerenBooks

Contact them by email at [email protected]

Other books by Judy Brown

‘Pillars of Salt’ (Templar Poetry) https://templarpoetry.com/products/pillars-of-salt-by-judy-brown

‘Loudness’https://www.serenbooks.com/book/loudness/

‘Crowd Sensations’ https://www.serenbooks.com/book/crowd-sensations/

This podcast is produced by Alternative Stories, a spoken word production company specialising in literary podcasts and radio programmes. To find out more about Alternative Stories, follow or hire them please follow the links below

https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories

Contact them by email at [email protected]

Please join us next week for a conversation with poet Vanessa Lampert about her debut collection ‘Say it With Me’. Subscribe in your favourite podcast app to have all future editions delivered to your podcast feed the moment they are released.

Welcome to The Seren Poetry Podcast, a series of conversations and readings with Seren poets.

In this episode we talk to Rachael Clyne about identity, belonging and self-acceptance, three central themes from her collection ‘You’ll Never Be Anyone Else’. Throughout the book, Rachel uses playful wit, and colourful imagery to explore Jewish and lesbian identity through various stages of life and consider what it takes to reconcile being different.

Rachael Clyne is a poet from Glastonbury. Her work has been published in journals such as Iamb, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse, Rialto, Shearsman, and Tears in the Fence, and widely anthologized. Her debut collection ‘Singing at the Bone Tree’ (Indigo Dreams) won Indigo Dreams’ Geoff Stevens Award 2013. Her pamphlet, ‘Girl Golem’ (4word.org), explores her Jewish migrant heritage and sense of otherness. Rachael was a professional actor, then psychotherapist. Her passions are eco-issues and identity.

‘You’ll Never be Anyone Else’ is available in bookshops nationwide or from the Seren website https://www.serenbooks.com/book/youll-never-be-anyone-else/

The podcast is presented by Rhian Edwards

The interviewer is Sarah Johnson

The interview recordings are by Sarah Johnson.

Production, sound design and editing are by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories

You can find out more about Rachael Clyne on her website https://rachaelclyne.blogspot.com/ or by following her on social media:

X @RachaelClyne1

Other books by Rachael Clyne:

‘Girl Golem’ (4word.org) https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/girl-golem-by-rachel-clyne

‘Singing at the Bone Tree’ (Indigo Dreams) https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9781909357518

Find out more about Seren and purchase books featured in this podcast by visiting the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/

Follow Seren on social media

Twitter https://twitter.com/SerenBooks

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SerenBooks

Contact them by email at [email protected]

This podcast is produced by Alternative Stories, a spoken word production company specialising in literary podcasts and radio programmes. To find out more about Alternative Stories, follow or hire them please follow the links below

https://alternativestories.com/

Contact them by email at [email protected]

Please join us next week for a conversation with poet Glyn Edwards about his collection ‘In Orbit’. Subscribe in your favourite podcast app to have all future editions delivered to your podcast feed the moment they are released.

Welcome to The Seren Poetry Podcast, a series of conversations and readings with Seren poets.

In this edition we speak with Polly Atkin about her startlingly original second collection ‘Much With Body’. The beauty of the Lake District is both balm and mirror, refracting pain and also soothing it with distraction: unusual descriptions of frogs, birds, a great stag that ‘you will not see’. Much of the landscape is lakescape, giving the book a watery feel, the author’s wild swimming being just one kind of immersion. There is also a distinct link with the past in a central section of found poems taken from transcripts of the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, from a period late in her life when she was often ill. In common with the works of the Wordsworths, these poems share a quality of the metaphysical sublime. Their reverence for the natural world is an uneasy awe, contingent upon knowledge of our fragility and mortality.

The podcast is presented by Rhian Edwards
The interviewer is Chris Gregory
Recordings, production, sound design and editing are by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories
Recordings of Rhian Edwards are by Sarah Johnson
This conversation was recorded on location at Wordsworth Grasmere in the Lake District.

You can find out more about Polly Atkin by visiting her website https://pollyatkin.com/
You can follow her on social media
Twitter https://twitter.com/pollyrowena
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pollyrowena/

Find out more about Seren and purchase books featured in this podcast by visiting the Seren website here https://www.serenbooks.com/
Follow Seren on social media
Twitter https://twitter.com/SerenBooks
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SerenBooks
Contact them by email at [email protected]

This podcast is produced by Alternative Stories, a spoken word production company specialising in literary podcasts and radio programmes. To find out more about Alternative Stories, follow or hire them please follow the links below
https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories
Contact them by email at [email protected]

We would like to express our thanks to Wordsworth Grasmere and all the staff there for their hospitality during our visit.
If you’d like to find out more about the work of Wordsworth Grasmere, get details of how you can visit the museum or attend one of their events please use the links below.
You can visit the Wordsworth Grasmere website here https://wordsworth.org.uk/
And follow them on social media via these links
https://twitter.com/WordsworthGras
https://www.instagram.com/WordsworthGrasmere/
https://www.facebook.com/WordsworthGrasmere/

Please join us next week for a conversation with poet and vet Ilse Pedler about her collection ‘Auscultation’ which will be released on Thursday 12th October. Subscribe in your favourite podcast app to have all future editions delivered to your podcast feed the moment they are released.