That Lone Ship 'Audio Book'
19/1/2021
Recently I finished reading Kaveh Akbar's Calling a Wolf a Wolf, a debut collection that follows a path through addiction to recovery. Akbar is one of the USA's most celebrated contemporary poets, writing not just about addiction but also race, religion, spirituality and the American dream. Often while reading a poetry collection, I'll seek out recordings of the poet so I can listen to them while reading. Sometimes it's to help crack a particularly difficult poem's riddle (hello Frederick Seidel and most of Ooga-Booga), other times it's just to hear the poet's voice while I'm reading. For Kaveh Akbar it was a bit of both – at first I just wanted to locate the key to one of his punctuation-free poems, but then I found such a huge amount of recordings of him online that I ended up listening along to most of the collection. He's a great performer of his work, and his recordings are easy enough to find, but if you don't have time to listen to them all then I'd recommend 'Palmyra' and 'Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives'. A poet's thoughts aren't too often far from their own poetry, and the sheer volume of Kaveh Akbar's recordings made me wonder how much of my own collection was available online in this way. I was surprised to learn quite a bit, and so I've compiled a list below – a cobbled-together audio book version of That Lone Ship, should you for some reason want to listen along while reading it. The print version ofThat Lone Ship is available to buy from Parthian Books. Note: Timestamps (e.g. 22:17) are included next to poems from longer recordings to indicate when that poem begins. THat Lone ShipHaiku En Dash [35:54] A New Year [47:19] Ghazal [45:25] Waiting Room The Pint that Follows [22:17] Bonaparte Before the Sphinx [37:22] Eglwyswrw [4:27] Drowned [44:14] Haiku Gull [39:50] The First Time School Eisteddfod Reunion Tour Victoria Park, 5 a.m. Haiku The Man at the Bus Stop [3:05] The Road Must Eventually Lead to the Whole World The M4 We Weren’t Interested in Girls Gastrophthalmophobia Bookshop Evacuation at the Edinburgh Festival Haiku Excavation [59:54] Geosmin The Walk to Work [10:32] Polaroid They Sang Gwahoddiad Haiku A Minute’s Silence New Shirt [59:19] Vetch Field Elegy 58 Years The Search Party [2:14] Third Boy (Dicky) Marking Out the Ground with String The End
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Haiku for January
4/1/2021
Haiku from That Lone Ship (Parthian Books, 2018)
parthianbooks.com/collections/poetry/products/that-lone-ship A New Year
1/1/2021
I thought I'd reshare this poem for New Year's Day – I wrote it in 2016 but it feels more suited to 2021. Yes, this January 1st is just a Friday after a Thursday and nothing in the world has changed, but even if things get worse again we’re still one day closer to better times. Keep going. A New YearThe years are storm-straddled, crag-black hooves thundering between headlands, kicking up hailstones, washing sandbagged towns to the sea. But, this afternoon, jaws clamp open, and all surface water reflects a fresh blue page. So go outside, and with the winter sun on your neck, a crisp shock of air in your lungs, tune out the fore-echo of hoofbeats, the sound of the storm about-turning. A new year stretches out as empty as mirrors, though no doubt still heavy with the weight of a first bite. Currently Reading: A. M. Burrage
24/12/2020
Haiku for December
7/12/2020
Haiku from That Lone Ship (Parthian Books, 2018)
parthianbooks.com/collections/poetry/products/that-lone-ship Haiku for November
9/11/2020
Haiku from That Lone Ship (Parthian Books, 2018)
parthianbooks.com/collections/poetry/products/that-lone-ship Haiku for October
5/10/2020
Haiku from That Lone Ship (Parthian Books, 2018)
parthianbooks.com/collections/poetry/products/that-lone-ship Anthology of Young Welsh Poets
15/9/2020
Bit late posting about this, but three of my poems were translated into Greek over the summer for this anthology of Welsh poets from YoungPoets.eu and Wales Literature Exchange, published by Vakxikon. Chuffed to be included alongside these names, and also to learn that my name in Greek is Ρις Οουάιν Γουίλιαμς. All the poems in the anthology are printed in their original language (Welsh or English) alongside Greek translations. You can purchase a copy of the book, and also learn more about the project and the poets involved, on the Young Poets website: youngpoets.eu/en/anthology-of-young-welsh-poets
#TheSealeychallenge
4/9/2020
Throughout August I took part in #TheSealeyChallenge – a reading challenge where participants read a book of poems a day during the month of August, and share their picks on social media to promote the poets/the reading of poetry. There's some good quotes about the challenge from founder Nicole Sealey in this Electric Lit article.
As a slow reader I’m lucky if I get through 31 books in a year, so for my first attempt at the challenge I chose to revisit 31 single poems instead – all favourites from collections and pamphlets I’ve recently read/re-read. Hats off to those reading entire collections, because I fell behind a few times during the month. It's been great to revisit poems though – you can see all my picks on this Twitter thread. |
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