All fours shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year

All fours is on the shortlist for the Wales Book of the Year 2018 in the Poetry in English category!

The poems in All fours were recently described as ‘ludic, perplexing and roaming’ in a review in the TLS by Leaf Arbuthnot. ‘Profane, charismatic and at times infuriating, Nia Davies’s poetry glitters above all thanks to its energy’ she writes.

All fours is available from the Bloodaxe website. Wales Book of the Year will be announced on the 26th of June.

 

Poem from new collection ‘All fours’

 

18

 

Remembered suddenly my noswaith dda attire
my trying taxonomies of sing song

my motionless carriage &/ my empathy carriage

and that I tried to strike the note of clasp-breast horror slasher maxed-out body resurrection.

At least tried my best, then.

I can’t but pity Exonymic countries
or cobbled together lucky folk, steamy flashes

and celtic music makes me tired.

I can try and declare myself friendly, but I am
terrible and to be noted,     wind-slapped,

aching pussy, not sure what to want.

In the apples the pips burned.

Stood in the coachyard teleologic,
had a personal jesus on a pin.

That was something that was passable as sex, at least.

I suppose technicalities made this regrettable.
I have a synthetic lemon feeling about it
the way murderers like it, clean.

Maudlin is not the same as macabre.

Do whatever you like, he says,

and, I, sandalwood,

dream of the threaded lip,
the pursuit of needlework,
bicarbonate of soda citric,

hurt me hurt me
now

hold me hold me
now.

I shouldn’t have to explain.

Look at my flaws
all around my life like chickenpox.

Wondered whether I’d die like
this with a cock in my mouth, that’s

a flashback, that’s why everything has a trigger
warning now, that’s when the idea

full throttle

becomes hundreds of droplets, panic.

We weren’t sure if that went well or not,
none of us are sure whether that went well,

when I was 18,
when I was 18 oh god

 

This poem  is from All fours, my debut collection. Out on 23rd June with Bloodaxe. More information here.

New publication: Long Words

Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız or Long Words by Nia Davies is out now from Hafan Press’s Boiled String Chapbook series.

To get a copy for £9.50 (and free postage!) visit this page to use PayPal.  Or send your terrestrial address to t.cheesman@swansea.ac.uk AND £9.50 by cheque to SWANSEA BAY ASSG.

Inspired by the Turkish tongue-twister Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız (Are you one of those we tried to make to be originating from Czechoslovakia?), the poems in this chapbook take their titles from the English translations of long words in various languages. These are words that can (barely) be translated as: ‘For those who were repeatedly unable to pick enough of small wood-sorrels in the past’, ‘To the least able to be making less understandable’, ‘For your [plural] continued behaviour as if you could not be desecrated’.

In the gaps between what we say and what we mean, between one language and another, Nia Davies finds such figures and motifs as contemptible palaeontologists, collective farms, the murdered women in Bolaño’s 2666, the never-ending suffix, dusty chickens, Estonian palindromes, ‘splitters gurning on white cream’, lies, drunkenness and the tortured question ‘what is poetry?’:

communication is not the aim of poetry
poetry is not the aim of communication
it gets in the way though somehow doesn’t it?

These are poems written in the shadow of the untranslatable/unconscious ‘fossil inside’.

en castellano

I’m thrilled that  two of my poems have been translated into Spanish recently.

Following (mind-expanding) travels to Buenos Aires, Patagonia and Chile as part of the Forgetting Chatwin journey Argentinian poet Marina C Kohon has translated my poem ‘Tiny Nudist Colony’.  You can read ‘Pequeña Colonia Nudista’ in translation and the original on her blog. There you can also find translations of some of the  Welsh poets who travelled to Patagonia with me: Karen Owen, Mererid Hopwood, Tiffany Atkinson and Richard Gwyn.

In 2012 one of my poems was among thousands dropped – or bombed rather – out of a helicopter above London’s South Bank.  Casagrande, the Chilean collective, showered the crowds at the Poetry Parnassus festival with little strips of paper, each printed with a poem in English and Spanish. The way they fluttered down in the light was quite mesmerising, as was the sight of people running, jumping and clambering over each other to catch a poem. The bombed poems have now been published in a book which, alongside poetry from young UK poets, a poet from each Olympic country and several fantastic Chilean poets, contains my poem ‘I want to do everything’ in English and also translated into Spanish by Chilean poet Kurt Folch.

Poems in Which Issue 3 – Now Live!

Poems in Which 3, illustration by Sophie Gainsley

Issue 3 of Poems in Which is now live!

Poems in Which 3, co-edited by Amy Key and myself, features Poems in Which from Alison Winch, Anthony Adler, Charlotte Chappel, Chrissy Williams, Declan Ryan, Emily Toder, Fran Lock, Harry Man, Harry Giles, Julia Bird, Petra Kamula, Rebecca Perry, Rosie Breese, Sampurna Chattarji, Stephen Connolly, SJ Fowler and Wayne Holloway-Smith. We also feature guest poems from Roddy Lumsden, Mark Waldron and Wioletta Grzegorzewska (translated from Polish by Marek Kazmierski).

Visit  poemsinwhich.wordpress.com to read the poems.  And you can also visit our Poem in Which editorial for issue 3 to read what we were after for this issue!

The Salt Book of Younger Poets

“The Salt Book of Younger Poets showcases a new generation of British poets born since the mid-80s. These poets have used new technologies to meet, mentor, influence and publish each other. This is a chance to encounter the poets who will dominate UK poetry in years to come.”

I am very happy to have five poems included this anthology – alongside some brilliant and very exciting young poets. The book is edited by Roddy Lumsden and Eloise Stonborough and you can buy a copy from the Salt website.

ALLEYCAT! ALLEYCAT! The kind of kitty it’s foolish to pat!

Dear poetry gluts and starvlings,

The Fogcutter is delighted to announce

ALLEYCAT
A poetry night in Dalston

April 7th, from 7.30

At Bardens Boudoir, 44 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston
suggested donation £5 to Refuge

with streetscrapping, fog-cutting, steam-piped poets

Roddy Lumsden, Sophia Blackwell, Inua Ellams and Sarah Howe

For more on this new night step aboard the HMS Fogcutter  http://thefogcutter.wordpress.com/