Badlands

Robert Minhinnick

Industrial smoke turns the noon sky black. Beneath its clouds the poorest people in Europe arrange flowers on a dictator’s grave. On Avienda de las Pulgas an Oldsmobile slows down for a better view. Emerging from a lemon grove is the last pedestrian in California. At a nuclear plant the only sound is the sighing of photocopiers. Another party of visitors gets ready for a tour. Welcome to Badlands …

The Beautiful Lie

Sheenagh Pugh

Lying and truth-telling are a matter of choice; our innate capacity for mendacity is the source of all story-telling. The title poem poem sets the thematic tone for this collection which explores the interface between...

The Bed of Memory

Jean Earle

Shortlisted for the 2002 Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award. These poems are informed by layers of memory, but never weighed down by them. Newcomers will appreciate the accessible style and the universal...

Beware Falling Tortoises

Sheenagh Pugh

A falling tortoise is a bizarre way to meet one’s end, but it is typical of Sheenagh Pugh’s wry humour that it finds a place in her poetry. The more humorous aspects of mortality and human frailty receive the same alert consideration as sombre subjects such as dictatorship, torture, the Dieppe raid and pollution ...

The Big Book of Cardiff

Peter Finch, Grahame Davies

A new anthology of writing about Cardiff, celebrating 100 years as a city, 50 as the Welsh capital...

Birdsong

Dewi Roberts

From the epic mythologies of the Mabinogion through to the present day, birds have exerted a powerful influence on the literature of Wales. This unique anthology gathers together a remarkable range of poetry and prose ...

Blind Man’s Meal

Bryan Aspden

Bryan Aspden’s second collection crosses Western Europe in its search for individuality in the face of an increasingly bureaucratic world. In the wake of Chernobyl, the rise of consumerism and mass media, and in the breaking down of national barriers he looks to the diverse cultures of Wales, France and Spain for an affirmation of identity in the shadow of bland universalism ...

Blodeuwedd

Tony Conran

Many of the poems in this collection are written for people whom they celebrate and remember. They include a homage to Sorley Maclean, ’A Fern from Skye’, and the ’Elegy for the Welsh Dead’, perhaps the finest poem about the Falklands War ever written ...