Join Welsh indie publisher Parthian Books and the Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye on Saturday 30 November for a day of short poetry readings on the hour at the clocktower.
Coinciding with the Hay Winter Weekend, why not wrap up for the weather and join us for more literary festivities on the streets of this wonderful town of books?
10am Niall Griffiths, Imogen Davies & Lewis Davies
11am Nigel Jarrett & Ifor Thomas
12pm Natalie Ann Holborow, Abigail Parry & Christina Thatcher
1pm Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Mari Ellis Dunning & Ness Owen
2pm Jemma L. King, Patrick Jones & Tracey Rhys
3pm Roberto Pastore & Susie Wild
The clocktower in Hay-on-Wye stands where Broad Street and Lion Street meet.
The Poetry Bookshop, The Pavement, Lion Street, Hay-on-Wye HR3 5BU will be open 11am-1pm and 2pm-5pm on the day. https://poetrybookshop.co.uk
Parthian Books has been publishing a carnival of voices from Wales and the wider world for over thirty years. www.parthianbooks.com
About the Poets:
Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has lived in mid-Wales for a long time now. Author of eight novels, a book of poetry, several works of non-fiction. The film of his third novel, Kelly+Victor, won a BAFTA. He has won the Wales Book of the Year twice, for the novels Stump, in 2004 and Broken Ghost in 2020. His work has been translated into around twenty languages and he has delivered readings from it all over the globe.
Lewis Davies is a founding partner of Parthian which he set up with Gillian Griffiths and Ravi Pawar in 1993. His work has received a number of awards, including the Rhys Davies short story prize and the John Morgan writing award. He has also worked extensively in Welsh theatre. Davies has been involved in the literary scene in Wales since 1990 and is the current commercial director of Parthian.
Imogen Davies is a Welsh writer and creative from Aberystwyth. With a bilingual upbringing in Welsh and English, she went on to study French, Spanish, and Catalan at Durham University. Since graduating she has interned at Honno Welsh Women’s Press and self-published her first poetry collection Distances. Her poetry has appeared both online and in print in various literary magazines, such as Acumen Young Poets and the Stratford Literary Festival’s Young Poets Collection 2022.
Nigel Jarrett is from Pontnewydd and read botany and zoology at Cardiff University. A former journalist with South Wales Argus he is now a poet, essayist, novelist, story writer, and critic. He won the Rhys Davies Award and the inaugural Templar Shorts award. His short story collection Funderland and poetry collection, Miners At The Quarry Pool, are published by Parthian. He has since published a novel, Slowly Burning, a second story collection, Who Killed Emil Kreisler?, and a second poetry collection, Gwyriad.
Ifor Thomas was born in Haverfordwest. A winner of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition, he is the author of the poetry collections Bogwiser, Unsafe Sex; Body Beautiful and Stalking Paloma. Body Beautiful, which is concerned with the experience of prostate cancer, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2006.
Natalie Ann Holborow lives in Swansea and is a winner of the Terry Hetherington Award and the Robin Reeves Prize and has been shortlisted and commended for the Bridport Prize, the National Poetry Competition, the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Award among others. She is the author of the poetry collections And Suddenly You Find Yourself and Small – both listed as Best Poetry Collections of the Year by Wales Arts Review – and, with Mari Ellis Dunning, the collaborative poetry pamphlet The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass. Her acclaimed third collection, Little Universe, was recently released through Parthian.
Christina Thatcher grew up between a farm and a ranch house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published in literary magazines, including Ambit, Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Poetry Wales, The North, The Poetry Review and more. She has published two poetry collections with Parthian Books – More than you were (2017) and How to Carry Fire (2020) – and her third, Breaking a Mare, will be published in 2025.
Abigail Parry’s first collection, Jinx, deals in trickery, gameplay, masks and costume; her second collection, I Think We’re Alone Now, investigates intimacy and estrangement. I Think We’re Alone Now was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and for Wales Book of the Year. Both are published by Bloodaxe.
Mari Ellis Dunning’s debut poetry collection, Salacia, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2019. She has since placed second in both the Lucent Dreaming Short Story Competition and the Sylvia Plath Poetry Prize. Her second collection, Pearl and Bone, was chosen as Wales Arts Review’s Number 1 Poetry Choice of 2022. Mari is working on her debut novel, exploring the witch trials of sixteenth-century Wales.
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has been twice shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year as well as for the Michael Marks Award. She has taught on the MSt in Creative Writing at Oxford University and at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Samantha was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from UWTSD in 2022. Her fourth poetry collection is due from Picador in 2026.
Ness Owen lives on Ynys Môn (Anglesey) in Wales where she writes poetry between lecturing and farming. She has been widely published in journals and anthologies including in Planet Magazine, Mslexia, The Cardiff Review, The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Atlanta Review, and Poetry Wales. She is the author of two poetry collections – Mamiaith (Arachne Press, 2019) and Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim (Parthian, 2023). She co-edited the A470, a bilingual poetry anthology about the infamous road running from the north to the south of Wales.
Jemma L. King won the Terry Hetherington Young Welsh Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Wales Book of the Year Prize and the Sundress Prize for her critically acclaimed debut poetry collection, The Shape of a Forest. Her second collection, The Undressed, was inspired by a cache of antique nude photographs, returning voices to women lost to history. Jemma recently won first prize in the international Cambrian Mountains Poetry competition 2024, for her poem ‘The Valley’, and her celestial third collection, Moon Base 1, will be published by Parthian in 2025.
Patrick Jones has over 30 years of words bearing witness to the world we live in and the soul we inhabit. He is the author of six performed works and many more published. His most recent work includes the poetry pamphlet Inviting the light (2024), writing lyrics for James Dean Bradfield’s Even in Exile album (Sony Records 2020) and the special 20th anniversary edition of Fuse/Fracture: Poems (2001-2021) with Parthian. He was born in Tredegar, Wales.
Tracey Rhys is a Bridgend-based writer, originally from the Rhondda. Her poems, stories and essays have appeared in Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Planet, The Lonely Crowd, Ink, Sweat & Tears, A470, Yer Ower Voices: Dialect Poetry from Wales, Lipstick Eyebrows and more. Listed for various competitions including the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition, Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition and Cardiff International Poetry Competition, her first pamphlet Teaching a Bird to Sing was a judge’s favourite in the Michael Marks Award. In 2020, she won the Poetry Archive’s Now: Wordview competition. Her debut collection Bathing on the Roof will be published by Parthian in 2025.
Susie Wild is author of the poetry collections Windfalls and Better Houses, the short story collection The Art of Contraception listed for the Edge Hill Prize, and the novella Arrivals. Her work has featured in many publications including Poetry Wales, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Atlanta Review and she has performed at festivals including Hay, The Laugharne Weekend, Green Man and Glastonbury. Also Publishing Editor at Parthian Books, Susie lives in Rhondda Fach with a TBR pile almost as high as Llanwonno.
Roberto Pastore is a British-Italian poet based in Cardiff. He studied Creative Writing in Carlisle where he was part of the renowned Speakeasy spoken word scene, and currently hosts a local monthly poetry group in Lufkin Coffee. 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, who adapted one of the poems into a performance piece and comic. Roberto’s second full collection, Graveyards On Other Planets, will be published by Parthian in 2025.
