Finally the day has come, fresh from the printers - copies of Seren’s new poetry collection - Bob Dylan’s poems have arrived!
The collection is available to pre-order from our website - www.serenbooks.com - in anticipation for its release on May 23rd 2011, not long to go!
Visit Seren Books online to get your hands on a copy!
…those three words that meant everything and nothing.
Truth is always an unexpected punch in the stomach.
Life has taught me something if not everything. By this time, I don’t think I’m better - or worse - than anyone else.
Well, people aren’t perfect, and we wouldn’t like them if they were.
In the early twenty-first century, the relationship between the West and Islam has, due to recent political events, become the subject of intense study, curiosity and tension. But to understand contemporary anxieties, we need to trace their historical roots. The Dragon and the Crescent does this for one small European nation, revealing for the first time, the full and surprising story of the Welsh relationship with Islam.
This extensive study has gathered 200 extracts from a huge range of Welsh literature over a 900-year period. It contains the literary testimonies of Welsh Crusaders, of soldiers and seafarers, of missionaries and merchants, explorers and exploiters, pious pilgrims and hedonistic pleasure-seekers.
The Dragon and the Crescent is a fascinating and thought-provoking collections drawn from diaries, journals, dramas, travelogues, novels and poetry. It explores writing from both the languages of Wales by authors including Ann Griffiths, T Gwynn Jones, Cynan, T.E Lawrence, David Lloyd George, Gwenallt Richard Llewellyn, Anthony Burgess, Alun Lewis, Alun Richards, Nigel Jenkins, Williams Owen Roberts, Peter Finch, Robert Minhinnick, Gwyneth Lewis and Horatio Clare. Graham Davies’s informative and acute analysis opens up a whole new field of study, revealing the huge Muslim influence on Wales, and the equally momentous Welsh influence on Islamic lands. It examines responses to the growth of Islam in contemporary Wales, casting a new light on Welsh relations with minority communities, and challenging myths of Welsh tolerance. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in intercultural and interfaith relations. This fascinating and at times unexpected view of Welsh, British and Islamic history is a hugely significant work for contemporary Britain. Learn more about Grahame Davies and The Dragon and the Crescent on our website or on http://serenbooks.wordpress.com/
(Source: serenbooks.com)
Seren author Ruth Bidgood has been shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize 2011.
The event which will take place 7.00pm Friday 8th April, The Guildhall Brecon, recognises works published in the fields of poetry, short stories, literary criticism and Welsh history.
The event hosted by BBC Cymru/Wales will include readings by the shortlisted authors.
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Time Being is Ruth Bidgood’s 10th collection in a career that spans almost 40 years. It has been said, rightly, that Bidgood’s work is ‘emphatically a poetry of location’ and it is the history and nature of her particular region of mid-Wales that most inspire the author. Her narratives are often literally exploratory and discursive as in ‘Viewpoint’ where a walk in the countryside revives both personal memories and knowledge of the stories associated with a place. Her distinctive voice has a quiet authority but also a subtle, conspiratory edge, as if she is letting one in on a secret, unveiling a hidden fact, or making a discovery. She avoids sentimentality, but – unfashionably – not sentiment; an observation can engender joy or sorrow or fear uncluttered by irony. Her descriptions are sharp and memorable, tending to a cool accuracy. Nature is not always a benign presence but also often inescapably dark and mysterious as in’ Illusion’ where “A goshawk climbs a tower of air and is gone”. Also notable here are several substantial sequences: ‘Gaps’, ‘Time Being’, ‘Reading a Landscape’. These are ambitious attempts to transcend the lyric and move towards a more epic, multi-faceted form equal to the many experiences of her long life.
(Source: serenbooks.com)
Seren has a new book release The Colour of Grass by Welsh author Nia Williams.
The Colour of Grass by Nia Williams is a story about families, past and present, and life’s unexpected connections.
With family history flourishing online, on TV and in Magazines, The Colour of Grass is a gentle and touching story of families past and present, the identites we create for life’s unexpected connections and ourselves.
Marc Evans’s Patagonia premiered in Cardiff last night at the Chapter Arts Centre.
The film starring Welsh-born-Hollyword-turned actor Matthew Rhys and Grammy Award winner Duffy, is about the Welsh Colony, Y Wladfa, in Patagonia.
Interested in Patagonia?
Check out Clare Dudman’s A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees published in June 2010.
A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees is a lyrical and insightful evocation of the trials of the first Welsh Patagonian colonists as they battle to survive hunger, loss, and each other.
(Source: serenbooks.com)
