Susie Wild's Blog: Wildlife, page 24

Nation.Cymru Review: 'gorgeous, unsentimental portraits'

Caroline Bracken reviews Windfalls for Nation.Cymru, I think she liked it.... 

'The word ‘windfall’ reminds me of Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘A Kite for Aibhín’ which ends or lands on that magical word. While they are very different poets, Susie Wild has something of Heaney’s lyric sensibility, an ability to capture a moment others might pass by [...] The love poems in the second section of the book are some of the strongest, gorgeous, unsentimental portraits, ‘He was a cupped hand/ to the cigarettes she’d quit// but taken up again’ (‘Everyone Got Married’) [...] Pandemic poems are a new popular phenomenon but I challenge anyone to write a better one than Susie Wild’s ‘How quickly we forget to live.’

I'm in good company too with collections by Dai George and Ilse Pedler also reviewed.

Read the article in full on Nation.Cymru

SPECIAL OFFER: Get Windfalls for a bargain price of £6 until Tuesday

Parthian Books say 'It's a special deal on some VERY special poetry!'  So it must be ;)

For a limited time you can buy this bundle of three BRILLIANT collections for £15! (original price: £27.99):
Small by Natalie Ann Holborow
How to Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher
Windfalls by Susie Wild



(OR there's a code for £3 off each title bought separately!)

Ends midday Tuesday. ENJOY!

Order here: https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/recommended-poetry/products/parthian-new-poetry-bundle

On the Radio: Penarth Sounds

I can’t listen back to myself on the radio etc! But you can... Here I am talking about my new poetry collection Windfalls on Penarth Sounds, available now from Parthian and all your favourite bookshops!

https://www.mixcloud.com/penarthsounds/writers-on-reading-episode-46/

🍎BOOK LAUNCH | New Poetry from Susie Wild🍎

You can now watch this lovely event held last week celebrating the release of Susie Wild's new collection Windfalls, hosted by editor and poet Zoë Brigley Thompson. Diolch to all who came along!

https://youtu.be/LQDcbvppPpo

Western Mail Author's Notes: 'Her poems are beautiful'

 

‘Her poems are beautiful, even when tackling difficult subjects, and arresting without feeling over-ornamented or inflated. Above all, they shine with authenticity - perhaps because she has a magpie’s appetite for glimpsed moments...’ – Jenny White

I’m in the Western Mail today promoting Windfalls. Out now from Parthian Books!

Buzz Review: 'A very affecting collection of poems indeed.'

The first review of Windfalls is in, thanks Mab Jones and Buzz Magazine! Rather pleased to have been compared to Jean Rhys.

'The word used for its title makes this collection instantly intriguing. It can mean both fruit blown down in the wind, or a large amount of money received unexpectedly. However, the reader isn’t given a sense, here, of such lottery-like good luck. Where windfalls are specifically mentioned, they belong to other people – to those who don’t realise their abundant good fortune.

'In one poem they are “next door’s apples”; in a later poem, those same apples “are still there – / the windfalls, rotting / in garden waste bags”. Other people have their inherited trees full of fruit but, not being gifted such, Wild’s windfalls are of the everyday – of its physical intimacies, its domestic pleasures, and of simply being alive despite life’s many challenges and setbacks.

'With its series of poems about boyfriends and lovers past, against a backdrop of bars and “nightclub shadows”, Wild comes across as the poetic equivalent of Jean Rhys: wry, arch, a little world-weary but, unlike Rhys, with a sparkling glint of humour. In the book’s second half, then, Wild is married, and the poems become more about love and life as a couple. However, there are no easy conclusions here – life isn’t suddenly all sweetness and roses. Those rotting apples remain, although they no longer pose a threat – “each apple / a small bomb” – and Wild comes to a kind of acceptance – “We learn to stay still”. A very affecting collection of poems indeed.'

Book Launch: Join us for the online launch of Windfalls

Join us for the online launch of Windfalls, the new poetry collection from Susie Wild.

Readings & Q&A hosted by poet and editor Zoë Brigley.
12 May

7pm UK

2pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)

‘Powerful, beautifully crafted poems... there’s nothing like poetry to cut down the spaces between us, to leap across gaps, make a friend of a stranger.’ – Jonathan Edwards

Book your free tickets here and a Zoom link will be sent shortly before the event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/susie-wild-launch-of-windfalls-tickets-152623816945

New Author Photos

 Thanks to Peter Dareth Evans for these:

Windfalls has arrived!

Exciting delivery! Windfalls exists! And was, typically, difficult to unpack! Available to pre-order from Parthian and out on 1 May 2021. Read more to see the unboxing video.

 

Windfalls Full Cover Spread

 

‘“A chase of messages illuminates my screen/through the small hours.” So begins Susie Wild’s new collection, and among things that are fascinating here are the messages these powerful, beautifully crafted poems bring us. From an interaction with a violent taxi driver to the experiences of a mistreated mother to a “whirlwind love” for a husband, this collection understands the power of lyric poetry to bring us real and raucous life. The poems are endlessly engaging, individually and in the ability of the writer to create sequences and consider the emotional arc of a collection. I’m reminded how now, more than ever, there’s nothing like poetry to cut down the spaces between us, to leap across gaps, make a friend of a stranger. Just as, in 'The Starfish,' there’s a commitment to “slowly … fix the broken things,” so these poems show us, again and again, how something of the greatest importance can be crafted from the chaos that life does.’ – Jonathan Edwards
Out 1 May 2021. Available to pre-order on the Parthian website.