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We're looking forward to this digital road trip to coincide with the launch of How to Carry Fire, the second poetry collection by Christina Thatcher. Buckle up and join us for the ride!

In the mean time you can catch up with all that Christina has been up to on her own blog, with her latest entry: 'Proofs, Previews, Pre-Orders':

by Sydney Whiteside

The second day of the 2020 Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival opened on Saturday morning with the New Poetry Showcase, a spectacle of new poetry from authors with recently published or forthcoming collections. Featuring five writers, both debut poets and those on their second or third collection, the showcase was a brilliant start to a dazzling Saturday of poetry in Cardiff’s Temple of Peace.

Cardiff poet Roberto Pastore was the first to read, sharing poems from his new collection Hey Bert, out now with Parthian. Pastore’s poems burst with energy and humour, highlighting the beauty in the everyday and reminding us of our ‘all too humanness’. Among the poems read was ‘Heart Poem’, a beautiful look into memory and the often impossible expectations we place on ourselves.

Kittie Belltree, who was born in south London and now lives in Wales, followed with readings from her debut collection Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks, also out now with Parthian. Her poems explore domestic trauma, history, and mother-daughter relationships with paralyzing detail and wit. Belltree closed her reading with ‘Magician’s Daughter’, a beautifully haunting piece about sexual abuse that makes whimsical diction dangerous and twists words into unexpected and wonderful combinations.

Georgia Fearn, writing in New Welsh Reader, found much to admire in Kittie Belltree's debut poetry collection Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks:  

'This poetry will make your heart sink; form lumps in your throat that will be broken by an unexpected snicker at Belltree wit. The collection paints perhaps one of the most haunting yet poignant representations of real life that I have ever experienced in poetry. Belltree is almost cruel in her unpleasant and vicious authenticity, yet this is what makes the poetry so moving. It is uncomfortable, it is intruding, and it is poetry that will undoubtedly change your perception of modern reality.' 

Read the review in full

We've not one but two positive reviews for the poetry in translation anthology Home on the Move to share with you!

Amanda Hopkinson, reviewing for Modern Poetry in Translation, writes:

'Whether or not readers are ignorant of many of its source languages, this small book contains much fascinating reading. Viewing too, for it also includes visuals supplied by film-makers. This is important for readers are also translators, processing words into pictures in our mind’s eye. If we lack some evocative poetic images – of sparrows, snails, spiders’ webs – not exposed to the camera, every poem lives on in our personal verbal-to-visual translations.'