Richard Gwyn

Q&A with Gary Raymond

Last month I was interviewed by the excellent Gary Raymond for his BBC Radio Wales Arts Show (listen here) and last week we did a Q&A in anticipation of our chat at the Abergavenny Writing Festival tomorrow. For… Read More

Ambassador of Nowhere

Thursday March 28th saw the launch of Ambassador of Nowhere. I was interviewed by the astute and genial Jon Gower – who has helped launch three of my books to date – and there were a few questions… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 40)

    Quarantine means forty days, so Poems for staying at home is coming to an end, for now. Nearly all of the poems published here since April 20th can be found in The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 39)

  In these dark times many people are unable to bury their dead, or even attend to their dying relatives. Fabio Morábito’s devastating poem captures the irony of grief and loss through the eyes of one mourner, whose… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 38)

This great and terrible poem of witness is now ten years old. The poem has become a symbol of resistance to state and narco gang violence and has in turn brought death threats to its author, María Rivera…. Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 37)

  For some of us, life during lockdown has sometimes seemed like one continuous screen session, interacting virtually with people we barely know. How strange, then, to read Paula Piedra’s poem about coming home to a TV screen… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 36)

  We know that feeling, of stepping out into the street in flames, and without ourselves. The peculiarity of drinking tequila or mescal in some darkened den, followed by that lurch into sunlight – or as here –… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 35)

    Let’s spare a thought for the beach poets, that ‘handful of geniuses’ who hang out on the sands, ‘making poetry with the waves’. Like the Dominican poet Frank Báez, perhaps, whose poetry does more than merely… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 33)

  Bunnies and top hats, David Lynch and the dark reverberations of down the rabbit hole; all of this explored by the inimitable Pedro Serrano in this quarantine poem, first published in The Other Tiger.   The Rabbit and… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 32)

  Today’s poem: a perfect study in stillness, by the Mexican poet Coral Bracho.   Goats In the whiteness and its nucleus of light the goats stand stock-still. Gently the rock holds them in its palm; like a… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 31)

  As we find ourselves in June, two bumblebees, observed by the Mexican poet Pura López Colomé, hover over ‘rose coloured leaves / from a flower that is not a rose.’   And the Anthurium, Undaunted Two bumblebees… Read More

Poems for staying at home (Day 30)

  After the weekend, this cow rummages through the debris left by the visiting humans; the remains of campfires, plastic carrier bags, bottles and beer cans. We know, we’ve seen it. Poor cow.   Fabio Morábito reminds us of… Read More