I usually play 5-a-side on a Thursday, but getting my kit on for a Euro 2016 warm-up event in Cardiff tonight instead. 

Edit: For those who missed the event, you can read my piece 'When Roger Freestone Played for Wales' here. 

I'll be reading some football-related poems (and some non-football-related poems) at a Euro 2016 warm-up event next Thursday (7th June) in Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.

Presented by Parthian Books and organised by Nick Fisk – author of The Blues are Back in Town – the event will feature poetry and general football discussion from myself, Nick and Tim Brenan, and a quiz from David Collins, whose Welsh Football Quiz Book has just been published by Y Lolfa. 

The event starts at 7pm, and entry is priced at £3. You can find out more by going to the Facebook event page: 

​facebook.com/events/1768657030087947

I recently sent some poems into the Wales PEN Cymru New Voices Competition. Judged by Fflur Dafydd and Owen Sheers, the annual competition is open to unpublished writers aged 18–30, with the winner becoming Wales PEN Cymru's nominee for the PEN International New Voices Award.

Standards for the competition are pretty high (last year's Welsh nominee Rebecca F. John won the whole thing), so I was delighted to be named as a runner-up, alongside the incredibly talented Natalie Ann Holborow, when the results were announced last week.

Wales PEN Cymru offers Welsh writers the opportunity to join an international organisation and belong to a world community fighting for free expression. Membership is open to writers, journalists, translators, editors and students of creative writing who subscribe to the aims of the PEN charter.

Congratulations to Robin Ganderton, who was named as the competition winner and 2016 Welsh nominee. I'm hoping Robin will make it two in a row for Wales at the 82nd PEN Congress in Ourense, Galicia later this year. Pob lwc Robin!

Welsh language press release: ​http://golwg360.cymru/newyddion/cymru/226599-cyhoeddi-enwebiad-pen-cymru-ar-gyfer-lleisiau-newydd-pen-rhyngwladol