Susie Wild's Blog: Wildlife

GIG ALERT: New Welsh Review and Parthian Autumn Party

Join us at Storyville Books in Pontypridd to celebrate the latest issue of New Welsh Review with readings from our contributors and special guests.

We’ll be kicking off at 7.15pm with readings from issue contributors Lesley James, Richard Huw Morgan, Natasha Gauthier, Sybilla Harvey, Sam Christie and Roberto Pastore. Special guest Crystal Jeans will also be reading from her brand-new essay collection Blueprints.

Beautifully redesigned by Olwen Fowler, and now edited by Susie Wild, come and celebrate our inaugural new look, new team edition #138.
Free entry, all welcome.
Storyville Books, 8-10 Mill Street, CF37 2SN Pontypridd, United Kingdom
Doors 7pm, Readings start 7.15pm
Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/8vvvgHP9a
Lesley James was shortlisted for the Borzello Poetry Prize, part of this year’s New Welsh Writing Awards. She is part of the Representing Wales 2024/5 cohort and has work in Afonydd, Cardiff 75, Spelt and Black Iris. Earlier this year, she won a Big Welsh Rhyme Time commission from Books Trust Cymru.Richard Huw Morgan has worked professionally in experimental arts in Wales since 1990, as a practitioner, educator and facilitator. In 2011 he instigated Pitch, a weekly arts programme on Radio Cardiff, which ran until 2020.Natasha Gauthier is the winner of the Borzello Poetry Prize, part of this year’s New Welsh Writing Awards. A Canadian poet and journalist living in Cardiff, Natasha is also the winner of the Poetry Wales Award 2024-25. She established and hosts Tiger Bay Poetry at Chapter Arts Centre.Sybilla Harvey was runner-up in the Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Setting in this year’s New Welsh Writing Awards. Sybilla grew up in Abergavenny and lives in Brooklyn where she is a creative director for a production company. Her fiction has been recognised in the Berlin Writing Prize, the Mslexia Fiction Competition and the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition.Sam Christie is the winner of the Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Setting in this year’s New Welsh Writing Awards. Based in mid Wales, Sam has published prose and poetry in literary journals in both the UK and USA. He worked in forestry for several years and many of his stories look back on this time.Roberto Pastore is a poet based in Cardiff. His first collection Hey Bert was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His second, Graveyards On Other Planets, is published in October 2025.Crystal Jeans’ collection of stories Light Switches are my Kryptonite was awarded the Wales Book of the Year. Her recent fiction includes The Inverts and Accidental Darlings. Her debut short-story collection The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. She lives in Pontypridd.

GIG ALERT: Five Guys in the Literary Business

 

FIFTEEN YEARS! THE BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS

Gosh! The Bright Young Things Series launched in Swansea 15 years ago today, and in Cardiff 15 years ago yesterday.

GIG ALERT: Moon Base One Book Launch

Join us at The Poetry Pharmacy Lab in Bishop's Castle on Sat 18 October for the launch of Moon Base One, the extraordinary third collection from Jemma L. King. £5 entry / £12 book + entry. Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-moon-base-one-by-jemma-l-king-tickets-1682652682469

PHOTO BLOG: NWR138 Swansea Launch

What a fantastic launch we had at Elysium in Swansea on Saturday afternoon. Thanks to all who came along to celebrate with us, and to our wonderful readers and music makers: Dark & Twisties, Natalie Ann Holborow, Roberto Pastore, Emma Baines, Rhian Thomas, Natasha Gauthier, Abeer Ameer, clare e. potter and Ben Wildsmith!

LAUNCH PARTY: New Welsh Review Issue 138

The new New Welsh Review

Saturday 13 September, 2-5.30pm

Join us at elysium gallery, 210 High Street, Swansea to celebrate the latest issue of New Welsh Review with readings and live music.

Founded in 1988, New Welsh Review is Wales’ foremost literary magazine in English. For over thirty years, it has been central to the Welsh literary scene in offering a vital outlet for the very best new fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, a forum for critical debate and a rigorous and engaged reviewing culture. Today, New Welsh Review holds true to its original mission statement: to be dynamic, curious, lively and outward-looking, to commemorate the past but to celebrate contemporary excellence and new directions.

We’ll be kicking off with a set from the excellent Swansea band Dark & Twisties at 2pm with readings to follow from issue contributors including Abeer Ameer, Natasha Gauthier, Natalie Ann Holborow, Roberto Pastore and clare e. potter as well as more great music from Ben Wildsmith.

Beautifully redesigned by Olwen Fowler, and now edited by yours truly, come and celebrate our inaugural new look, new team edition #138.

Facebook Event Page
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Dark & Twisties are Sarah Birch, Kate Ronconi, Sarah Passmore, Danny Kilbride and Huw Rees, a collective made up of members of Lost Tuesday Society, Rag Foundation, and Sarah and the Creepy Uncles. They weave stories old and new into strange and beautiful songs with glorious harmonies and skilful musicianship. They are currently working towards their debut album Ungrateful Women and we can’t wait to hear it.https://www.facebook.com/DarkandTwistiesMusicAbeer Ameer is a poet of Iraqi heritage who lives in Cardiff. Her poem ‘at least’ (MODRON) has been shortlisted for the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her debut collection, Inhale/Exile, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2022. Currently working on a second, Abeer shares readings on her YouTube channel.Natasha Gauthier is a Canadian poet and journalist living in Cardiff. The winner of the Borzello Trust Poetry Prize 2025 and the Poetry Wales Award 2024-25, Natasha established and hosts Tiger Bay Poetry at Chapter Arts Centre.Natalie Ann Holborow is a winner of the Terry Hetherington Award and the Robin Reeves Award. Little Universe, her third full collection, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2025. Natalie was a runner-up in the New Welsh Writing Awards Rheidol Prize 2025 for her short story ‘The Man Who Knew Things’.Roberto Pastore is a poet based in Cardiff. His first collection Hey Bert was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His second, Graveyards On Other Planets, is published in 2025.clare e. potter won the RSL Jerwood Poetry Award 2025 for Cymru. Her Cymraeg pamphlet Nôl Iaith follows new collection Healing the Pack. Her BBC Radio Wales programme The Poet’s Poet was nominated for a 2025 Celtic Media Award.Ben Wildsmith is a musician, writer, Nation.Cymru columnist, and poet. His memoir about adoption and identity Whose Song to Sing? will be published by Calon in February 2026. He’s been a performing musician since he was fifteen and his album Damn My Sense of Humour will be out in 2026.

DOUBLE LAUNCH PARTY: Roberto Pastore and Ben Rhys Palmer at Waterstones Cardiff

Thursday 16 October 7pm

Waterstones Cardiff

Join us in store as we welcome Roberto Pastore and Ben Rhys Palmer for the launch of two joyful, tender, and deeply human poetry collections. An evening of conversation, with readings and a Q&A, chaired by Parthian Books' publishing editor, Susie Wild. 

https://www.waterstones.com/events/poetry-launch-roberto-pastore-and-ben-rhys-palmer/cardiff

Roberto Pastore's sophomore collection Graveyards on Other Planets offers up a patchwork of epiphanies, missing people, stigmata, Steven Carrington’s eyes, power cuts and the shadow of war. Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed. In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own ‘sad heartsong’. Here are poems that feel both intimate and timely, yet somehow beamed in from another planet, far, far away.

'Bert’s poems make the reader aware of other worlds, other planes of existence; how heavy night hangs, whispers overheard in dreams and waiting rooms, what is sheltered within our bodies. Profound, darkly funny, and deeply human.’ – Joshua Jones 

In Ben Rhys Palmer’s joyful debut collection, discombobulated robots rub shoulders with philosophising hyenas, orangutan brides, Mesopotamian fish gods, and a psychotherapist from outer space. At once funny, tender, and beautifully bizarre, Breakfast with the Scavengers explores love, loss, loneliness, our never-ending quest for connection, and those blink-and-you-miss-them moments of transcendence that can light up our lives.

'Ben Rhys Palmer builds a world in every poem, allowing the reader to live inside it, entertained yet teetering on the precipice of disaster. These poems are romantic, apocalyptic, welcoming, terrifying, funny and heartbreaking all at once.' – Caroline Bird

Roberto Pastore is a poet based in Cardiff. He studied Art History & Creative Writing in Carlisle where he was part of the renowned Speakeasy spoken word scene. His first collection Hey Bert (Parthian, 2019) was highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize and subsequently appeared in the Forward Book of Poetry 2021. In 2022 he released a poetry pamphlet entitled Absolute Joy which led to a collaboration with artist Rob Churm. Graveyards On Other Planets is his second full collection.

Ben Rhys Palmer is a poet, translator, editor, and musician born in Cardiff, Wales and now based in Guadalajara, Mexico. His poetry has been published in The London Magazine; Poetry Wales; New Welsh Review; Forklift, Ohio, and Under the Radar. Winner of the Verve Poetry Competition 2022, Ben was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2023 and highly commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize, the Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition, The Interpreter’s House Poetry Competition and the Welshpool Poetry Festival Competition. Breakfast with the Scavengers is his debut collection.

Refreshments will be provided! Please note that our events space is on the first floor, accessible via stairs or lift. Do contact us if you have any access requirements.

Doors open at 18:30

Further details: 02920665606

Coming This October: Three deeply-human poetry collections from Parthian

Out next month: three brand new poetry collections from Parthian:

Graveyards On Other Planets – Roberto Pastore:

'Profound, darkly funny, and deeply human.' – Joshua JonesIn his sophomore collection, Roberto Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed. ‘I attend the reunion of myself./ Swapping out lime water for chamomile tea./ Comb-over days in which we refuse to accept what is lost.’ 
In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own ‘sad heartsong’. 
Here are poems that feel both intimate and timely, yet somehow beamed in from another planet, far, far away.




Breakfast with the Scavengers – Ben Rhys Palmer:
'These poems are romantic, apocalyptic, welcoming, terrifying, funny and heartbreaking all at once.' – Caroline Bird

In Ben Rhys Palmer’s joyful debut collection, discombobulated robots rub shoulders with philosophising hyenas, orangutan brides, Mesopotamian fish gods, and a psychotherapist from outer space.

A Welsh poet based in Mexico, his poems about Mexico capture the magic and vibrancy of a country André Breton once described as ‘the most surrealist in the world.’ 

At once funny, tender, and beautifully bizarre, Breakfast with the Scavengers explores love, loss, loneliness, our never-ending quest for connection, and those blink-and-you-miss-them moments of transcendence that can light up our lives.

Moon Base One – Jemma L. King:

‘In Moon Base One, Jemma L. King transports the reader between the sea and the stars; between mother and child; between the body and the vastness around it, so these are not separate spaces but part of the same orbit. King has a gift for writing in a way that’s relentlessly inventive and so often breathtaking. Raw heart, electric imagery and undeniable skill – Jemma L. King’s best yet.’ – Natalie Ann Holborow

'A masterclass in metaphor. From foetal spacemen to the ever-shifting landscape of the maternal body, here is poetry microcosmic and macrocosmic, intimate and vast, gorgeous and visceral. It moved me; it made me want to write; it was brimful of loss and hope and complexity. I loved it.' – Emily Blewitt

SUMMER SCRAPBOOK: Parthian and New Welsh Review Event Highlights

 

PARSNIPS: Listen again to Natalie Ann Holborow on Radio 4's The Verb

Parsnips! Listen again to Natalie Ann Holborow on The Verb on Radio 4 from last night’s show / Hay Festival

The Adverb at the Hay Festival with Ian McMillan joined by Michael Rosen, Len Pennie, Alex Wharton, and Natalie Ann Holborow, and a tribute to children's writer Eleanor Farjeon.