Susie Wild's Blog: Wildlife, page 23

Me & Mr Jones: Storyville Books, Pontypridd

Patrick & I were out book signing our latest poetry releases today at lovely indie bookshop Storyville Books in Pontypridd. It was an absolute delight to chat to readers, sign books for birthday, Xmas and love thyself gifts and to meet Selwyn the Dog.

I also got to wear my new gig tights from Snag...



To top it off Ben & I were able to have lunch at the delicious Janet's Authentic Northern Chinese Restaurant in Ponty Market and it was so so so so good!

LIVE POETRY BOOK LAUNCH: WINDFALLS & WORKING OUT

Come and celebrate books in real life with this belated double launch of Windfalls and Working Out in Swansea, second poetry collections from myself and David Hughes... with a Parthian book stall selling great festive gift picks...

Facebook Event Page

5 star Amazon review for Windfalls: 'These poems dance through this book without putting a foot wrong.'

 5.0 out of 5 starsSwimming with swallows!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 October 2021

An adept at modern poetry and the vagaries of the modern world, Susie Wild's latest collection explores life as a singleton being ghosted by boyfriends and yet haunting them, being vegan and yet having to hilariously put up with the palaver of men cooking meat to eventually finding a kind of happiness and marriage to a musician and key worker. This is bang up to date with poems like 'How To Become A Recluse' and 'How Quickly We Forget How To Live'. There is breath and range in these poems from love in a horrific London flat, to an amazing trampoline poem, from boxing lessons to the joy of swimming with swallows. These poems dance through this book without putting a foot wrong.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Windfalls-Su...

Happy National Poetry Day Poets & Poetry Lovers!

 This year's theme is Choice, and readers I choose you. Here are some excerpts of poems fitting the theme from my new collection Windfalls on sale or on order now from all your favourite places to buy books...

Buy Windfalls now from Parthian

Autumn Poetry Gigs

Hiya Lovelies! I hope you are adjusting to the change in season and have been reading poetry and buying poetry books  and supporting lots of indie bookshops and poetry publishers for today's National Poetry Day and Saturday's Bookshop Day!

I have been adding gigs to the calendar and layers to my wardrobe in preparation for taking Windfalls out of the Zoom sphere and back to some in person events and I am very much looking forward to sharing the new poems with you in my favourite way... Here are some dates for your diary, on and offline:

Saturday 9 October - 12.30pm: Knighton Festival

Join us for a free festival session online at Knighton Festival between 12.30 and 1.30 with poet Susie Wild sharing from her new collection Windfalls first followed by a short Q&A and then novelist Gary Raymond talking about his new novel Angels of Cairo and answering questions from 1pm.

Book your free tickets: https://www.knightoncommunitycentre.com/tickets.html

Saturday 16 October -  SFF2021: The Mumbles Day Out

To whet your appetites for Swansea Fringe Festival this year, we've put together a rather nifty, and super special, FREE ENTRY event SFF2021: The Mumbles Day Out at Ty Cwrw The Front Room Tearoom & Bistro featuring lots of poetry and music.

Parthian Poet Times:

12.30 – Natalie Ann Holborow

1.30   – Susie Wild

2.30   – Patrick Jones

4.30   – Tôpher Mills

Saturday 16 October - 6pm - Patrick Jones and Susie Wild: Fuse, Fracture and Windfalls

An event with poets Patrick Jones and Susie Wild in conversation, as part of Crickhowell Literary Festival. Location: The Festival Marquee, Castle Grounds, High Street, Crickhowell, NP8 1BE. 

Order tickets here.

Tuesday 16 November - 7.30 pm – Susie Wild & Special Guests: Windfalls Swansea Launch Party

Join Susie Wild and creative friends at the delayed live Swansea launch party for her new poetry collection Windfalls! It will be held at Elysium, 210 High Street, Swansea SA1 1PE with readings from the book and a chance to pick up a signed copy. Free entry.

www.facebook.com/Elysium-827738283964895

gwales.com Review of Windfalls: 'substantial, touching, entertaining and very fresh'

This latest collection by Susie Wild is substantial, touching, entertaining and very fresh; it is also a handsome production. Susie Wild is known for her live readings and the poems have an immediacy and accessibility which suggest this. 

The collection is in two parts: ‘The Carnivore Boyfriends’ and ‘Windfalls’. While the title poem of the first section is generally humorous, the last line suggests a history of bad experiences which is certainly born out in some of the later poems. Some are tender remembrances of early days, like ‘Brockley Cross’ or Wild’s hymn to her childhood bicycles, but ‘This Is Why We Can’t’ and ‘Traumatic Language’ evoke a seriously over-controlling partner, and ‘Newly Single’ the threat of rape or worse. The indirect language of this poem captures the small steps, doubts and excuses which end with ‘[p]erhaps you should / have pressed charges. Spoken to someone. / But you didn’t.’ 

There are some brilliant portraits here of men, like ‘Burton’s Boy’ (‘a fucked fairy tale ... You Vogue in drainpipes, / Slide down them at dawn.’) or the lover in ‘He didn’t bring me flowers’, who brought exotic vegetables instead (‘an aubergine ... the exact shade / of my changing hair’), but who then ‘came spilling sunflowers ... seeded promises to break.’ The more tentative lover of ‘Eye Contact’ suggests a better future. 

In the later poems we are given more of the story. ‘Heavyweight’ links the period of the controlling partner with a later group on boxing and testifies to the support of ‘local’ friends when she is ‘sheltering from an emptied life’. In ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’, the new couple encounter her ‘ex’ and ‘[a] limp girl shrank into his shadow. Familiar / as a puddle.’ But Mrs Smith feels at once the huge ‘tectonic’ shift between them and ‘of finally stepping away’. The power and precision of this poem is typical of Wild’s ability to express deep significance through details of the mundane. 

‘Windfalls’, the longer section, has plenty more reflections on love and marriage, including the very topical ‘The Cancelled Honeymoon’ and ‘The Key Worker’s Wife’. The ‘Windfalls’ title poem gives a picture of abundance and waste, tinged with humour and unease. The later poem, ‘All I have’, recalls the windfalls, still rotting; the garden is overgrown but ‘crows visit us like / an ark’ and the poet stands ‘and take[s] in all I have – despite everything.’ It is a very recognisable state but also one which runs through many of the earlier poems – of endurance, wry humour and appreciation of life as it is. The epigraph of the section reminds us that ‘windfall’ may refer to fallen fruit or ‘an unexpected, unearned or sudden gain’. The poems certainly chart both senses as love and life fall and decay but also one finds strange, unexpected gifts. 

Caroline Clark

A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales. 

The Swallows and the Swimming

 Oh to be swimming in Greece… Windfalls is out now from Parthian and all good bookshops.

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

I meant to post this yesterday… it is the season for windfalls so here is one for you from Mid Wales, appropriate to our journeying yesterday. Windfalls is out now through Parthian.

GIG ALERT! Patrick Jones and Susie Wild – Fuse, Fracture and Windfalls

NEWSFLASH! I have been booked to do a real life gig. I'll be joining Patrick jones on the stage at Crickhowell Literary Festival on Saturday 16 October at 6pm. Do come along!

Patrick Jones and Susie Wild – Fuse, Fracture and WindfallsPatrick Jones has been a significant voice in Welsh poetry for twenty-five years. In this new edition of Fuse Fracture he engages with the energy and passion that has made his work stand out.Susie Wild's second collection Windfalls are tales from unexpected events, funny, perceptive and sometimes wild.
Book tickets on eventbrite

Mademoiselle Albertina

 

125 years ago today Mademoiselle Albertina's body was found near Nash. Her grave in the local cemetery called to me on a walk this week, pulling me a different route round – through conservation woodland onto a grassy, bramble-lined path, curving past the first blackened berries tart to taste. And then, there she was, the freshly cleaned headstone gleaming white in the heatwave sun. 

Here's my poem about her from my new collection Windfalls, out now through Parthian Books: