Angela Graham is a BAFTA Cymru-winning film-maker and journalist. She has produced programmes for BBC, ITV, S4C and Channel 4 and was Development Producer of The Story of Wales.  She produced and co-wrote the Oscar entrant cinema feature Branwen (6 BAFTA Cymru nominations and Best Film at the Celtic Media Festival), and was a screenwriter on drama projects set in Italy, Romania and Ireland. She began her career in ITV, and spent eight years as a producer at one of Britain’s rare production co-operatives, Teliesyn.

She turned to writing full time in 2017. Her poetry has appeared in The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Wales, The Ogham Stone, The Open Ear, The Interpreter’s House and other journals. An award-winning short story writer, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2019. She is currently finishing a novel and engaged in a prose/poetry project on Place and Displacement in the context of urban violence.

Stage Door, Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl CF36 3YW

https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/delirium

This collection of short prose begins with a real 1945 diary kept in Burma, and Minhinnick telling stories to his mother in her care home.

It includes a series of pictures of war-stricken Baghdad, and vignettes about place and travel, dedicated to Jan Morris.

On the way we encounter a Middle East island devoted to sustainability, close ups of what clearing a family house reveals, and the writer’s intimately imagined Welsh sand dunes.

Minhinnick also watches the Stereophonics in Sydney, mourns the Golan Heights and meets a family of destitute Bedouins.

Throughout we encounter the Covid pandemic, threats of extinction, and images of post-apocalyptic life.

A breathless epic…

Green Room returns - Gorwelion Shared Horizons launch with contributor Laura Wainwright reading, Robert Minhinnick hosts. Friday 25 March 8pm above SUSSED James St Porthcawl.

8pm. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4 The Stage Door, Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl CF36 3YW

Nia Vine is about to fulfil her dream of exploring an unmapped cave system.

NIA by Robert Minhinnick

With her will go two friends who were brought up in the same seaside town.

These companions are international travellers, but Nia, who has recently become a mother, feels her experience insignificant compared with that of her friends.

While the three explore, Nia finds herself obsessed by a series of dreams that finally lead to a shocking revelation.

The “unmapped cave system” is based on the real-life ‘Schwyll’ and the ‘Great Spring of Glamorgan’, at Ewenni.

This is the third novel in Minhinnick’s ‘Sea Holly’ series, based on the resort of Porthcawl.

Peter Morgan will play music and exhibit his photographs of Porthcawl fairground and local instances of climate change, two themes of the book. Kristian Evans will be guest reader.

Mick Felton, Managing Director of publishers, Seren Books, will introduce the event.

Minhinnick’s previous book. ‘Diary of the Last Man’ (Carcanet), was Wales ‘Book of the Year’ in 2018 and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Robert Minhinnick is also the Co-founder of Sustainable Wales, with responsibility including Arts, Literature, Events and is the Charity Secretary.

ENTRY: FREE but signed copies of ‘Nia’ will be available at £9.99.

https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/nia

PAUL HENRY AT GREEN ROOM, PORTHCAWL

8pm FRIDAY, MARCH 30

Green Room, Sustainable Wales, 5, James St., Porthcawl CF36 3BG

Next reader at Porthcawl’s ‘Green Room’ is poet and musician, Paul Henry, launching his new collection, The Glass Aisle.

Sustainable Wales has been trying for two years to tempt Paul to Porthcawl, and we’re delighted he’s here.

The book moves between rage and stillness, past and present, music and silence.  It is Paul’s tenth book and will delight with its assured lyricism. Copies will be on sale on the night and in our shop, SUSSED.

With Open Mic.

£4 entrance.  Everyone welcome/Croeso cynnes i bawb.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

• Friday, March 31, 2017
• 8:00pm  10:00pm

A welcome return for Rhian Edwards to the Green Room. 

Brood is the new pamphlet from poet Rhian Edwards. Winner of all three categories of Wales Book of the Year in 2013 for her debut poetry collection, Clueless Dogs, Bridgend-born and based Edwards is known for her dazzling performance style and her vivid, often acutely personal poems.

The new pamphlet opens with ‘Birds of Rhiannon’ introducing us (via a nod to the famous medieval Mabinogion story where magic birds, said to bring people back from the dead, console the heartbroken Celtic princess Rhiannon) to a darkly resonant tone that echoes from the myth:

Before I was mortal, I was haloed

in feathers, my trinity of familiars;

whose birdsong was legend, serenading

the dead from their dreams,

lullabying the living to torpor…

The centre of this new pamphlet is a ten-part poem, ‘Pied Margot’ based on the mnemonic rhyme for groups of magpies ‘One for Sorrow, Two for Joy…’. This long poem charts the progression of a troubling relationship from infatuation to disillusionment, alongside the birth of a much-loved daughter.

There are unflinching descriptions of arduous pregnancy, as well as miscarriage, that remind us that this stage of a woman’s life can be as risky as a battlefield. Also, any parent will recognise the irritated joy of ‘Kiss’ where a child becomes an expert at ‘delaying the damnation of bedtime.’

Meanwhile, birds are at all times present: hovering, chattering, casting their shadows, they are both tricksters and familiars in these hypnotic, spell-like poems. Welsh artist Paul Edwards has provided some beautiful charcoal drawings of magpies inspired by this atmospheric sequence, which feature throughout the pamphlet.

Other poems feature Gulls, Red Kites and ‘The Universal Doodle’ of a murmuration cloud of starlings. This pamphlet Brood is an apt follow-up to Clueless Dogs and leaves us eager for the poet’s next full collection.

GREEN ROOM WELCOMES RADICAL POET

8pm. Friday, February 24 sees the return of the charity, Sustainable Wales’s Green Room after a winter break.

First performance will be poet, MIKE JENKINS, a widely published writer who has won Wales ‘Book of the Year’ and edited the international quarterly, ‘Poetry Wales’.

Mike is celebrated for his radical political views, but his poetry is wide ranging and original. Often it reflects his life spent as a teacher in comprehensive schools in south Wales.

Well known also as an opponent of opencast mining, which he sees as a blight on his local landscape in Merthyr Tydfil, Mike Jenkins has also recently began to write in Welsh.

Joining Mike will be fellow poet MIKE CHURCH, and there will be opportunities for local writers to join in the Open Mic, always a popular Green Room feature.

The Green Room will diversify in 2017, with a series of music events and discussions.

Entrance £4. Everyone welcome. The charity does not have an alcohol license, thus the public are urged to bring their own.

More information: 01656 773627

The latest books by Mike Jenkins and Mike Church will be on sale on the night.

SEPTEMBER 25, 7.30pm. Launch of ‘Limestone Man’

by Robert Minhinnick, a novel published by Seren Books.  With music from Peter Morgan and guest readers.

At ‘Ty Carnegie’ (Arts Hub), Wyndham Street, BRIDGEND, CF31 1EF. FREE ENTRANCE

Sustainable Wales’s ‘Green Room’ performance space has its autumn 2015 programme lined up. More details www.sustainablewales.org.uk

All events usually take place at 5, James St., PORTHCAWL CF36 3BG on the last Friday of the month.

However, on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 7.30pm we move to Ty Carnegie (Old Library) Wyndham Street, Bridgend CF31 1EF, for the launch of Robert Minhinnick’s novel, ‘Limestone Man’ (Seren). Free entrance. 

The novel features a main character, Richard Parry, who returns to south Wales after teaching in Australia. He discovers his hometown is now notorious for the suicides of young people.

Parry is a ‘writer who cannot write, a painter who does not paint’. His obsession is Lulu, “an orphan off the street, an aboriginal green child.” Lulu was gone missing in mysterious circumstances.

‘Limestone Man’ is the second novel in Robert Minhinnick’s ‘Sea Holly’ series.

The performance will feature two voices plus space-age keyboards played by Peter Morgan. There will also be three guests at a special ‘Open Mic’ event. ‘Limestone Man’ retails at £9.99. available at SUSSED

More information to follow

Steve will be testing some of his ‘Late Love Poems’, due from Cinnamon in 2016, the press that has published his last two books.

Steve has given many readings in Wales, England, USA, France, and Spain, and has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Radio London and Radio 4 Cymru – most recently in December 2006 on Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’. He has appeared in a number of anthologies, including the Library of Wales' Poetry 1900-2000, featuring 100 twentieth century Welsh poets writing in English. He is keen to perform his new work more widely. Click here to read a response to a reading he gave for Wenlock Books in Shropshire in April 2007.

www.stevegriffithspoet.com

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Steve spent his childhood on the beaches and cliffs around Trearddur Bay, not knowing that 35 years earlier one Ronald S.Thomas was getting his feet wet in the same pools. At the age of 11, he moved to Amlwch, the origin of al-Chwm in An Elusive State. After reading English at Cambridge at the end of the Sixties, he began a working life engaged with the consequences of, and some solutions to, poverty, inequality and poor health, first as a welfare rights worker in London, later as a researcher and consultant in social and health policy, in the last fifteen years working freelance all over Britain for local and national government, health bodies, and charities; and most recently in campaigning mode. This commitment has often squeezed out the poetry; but the quarrel between landscapes has created a defining tension in his work. He has constantly returned to the scene of his childhood for renewal. After forty years based in London, with his second wife Wendy he will be moving west to Ludlow this year. He was Vice-Chair of the Welsh Academy (English section) at the beginning of the Nineties, and is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

More from Literature Wales

Significance follows the consequences of her decision.

Jo Mazelis has been a graphic designer and photographer as well as a writer, working on magazines in London. She lives and writes in her hometown, Swansea.

Jo’s reading will be followed by questions, opportunities to purchase her books, and the popular Green Room Open Mic for others to perform their work.

More details: 01656 773627

Further reading:

http://www.literaturewales.org/writers-of-wales/i/129743/desc/mazelis-jo/

Novelist, poet, photographer, essayist and short story writer, Jo Mazelis

 was born in the middle of a summer storm on the edge of the Gower Peninsula. She grew up in Swansea, later living in Aberystwyth and London for over 14 years before returning to her hometown. She worked as a graphic designer back when magazines were put together with scalpels and wax, occasionally undertaking portrait assignments to photograph writers such as P.D. James, Patricia Highsmith and Kathy Acker, artists Paula Rego and Nan Goldin, and actors Miranda Richardson and Tilda Swinton amongst others.

She has won a prize in the Rhys Davies Short story award five times, was longlisted for the Asham Award and her first collection of short storiesDiving Girls was shortlisted for both Wales Book of the Year and Commonwealth Best First Book. Her work has appeared in New Welsh Review, Spare Rib, Poetry Wales, Raconteur, Cambrensis, Nth Position, the Big Issue, Corridor, The Ottawa Citizen, Everywoman, Tears in the Fence and Lampeter Review amongst others. Several of her stories have also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

She has exhibited her artwork at Camerawork, London, The Camera Club, London, The Dylan Thomas Centre, Pontardawe Arts Centre and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and has recently begun exploring filmmaking as a means of exploring identity and memory.

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Green Room (new account for events):

@1thegreeneroom

@suswales

Jo Mazelis:

https://twitter.com/jomazelis