Tag: poems

Soiree and Exhibition

Everything changes, it’s always the same.

So to mark the end of one thing and the restart of another we are pleased to invite you to a farewell soiree and an exhibition of paintings and books.

More details soon, but the basics are:

Farewell Soiree

and

Exhibition of paintings and books

at

Pulse Wholefoods / The Wholefood Shop

67 Radnor Road, Cardiff, CF5 1RA

Thursday May 26th & Friday May 27th

5.30pm – 7.30pm both evenings

B.Y.O.B.

Preview of some of the paintings in the exhibition here: http://derecjones.com/2021/05/14/art-exhibition/

Umming and Aahing

In the meantime we can help with most aspects of media production of one sort or another

give us a shout . . . .

Blodyn

Blodyn

by Derec Jones

Paperback available now:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1904958621/

The poems in this collection have been selected from work that spans more than half a century. They are in no particular order but have been chosen to represent as many styles and to present as much variety of content as possible.

This book has no direct connection to flowers except in its title and in the design of the book cover which features a photograph of a painting by the author called Blodyn.

If you know that Blodyn is the Welsh word for flower, and you do now, you’ll understand why the painting is called Blodyn.

But why is this book called Blodyn?

It’s because Blodyn, the painting, is very special to the author and the words in this book are special too. Blodyn is neither plant nor animal, neither he nor she, yet she is both plant and animal. She is pure and raw and beautiful and animalistic and wild.

Available from February 1st 2017 from the usual outlets. Launch event coming soon.

Please contact Opening Chapter to reserve a signed copy.

Pomes

pomesfront

John Thomas Ahearn’s long awaited collection of poems

Pomes, Older and Younger, a debut poetry collection from John Ahearn, offers a basket of poems that will stay long after they have been read, poems that manage to smile at the realities of love and life. John Ahearn believes that all the old forms are there to be used in the working poet’s toolbox – that there is a form for every expression. His unsparing modern eye does the rest.

Buy Pomes for just £9.99 with free shipping in the UK only [wp_cart:Pomes:price:9.99:end]

please contact us if you want to order a book from outside the UK with your delivery details and we will advise you of the cost.

Listen

Gothic Folk musician Marc Roberts presents a collection of his unique poems, stories and song lyrics.

Listen…love, sadness, the esoteric, the everyday…

Listen…beauty and ugliness and a poetry of both…

Listen…the wheel is whispering…can you hear?

* * *

 
 
His work has considerable stylistic variety, With a Shelleyan tremulousness at one end of the spectrum, and a hard edged fantasy – glitter at the other’
Richard Poole
‘If you worked in a health food shop, and had Andi Sex Gang as one of your top friends, then maybe you would write songs like this…’
Noel Gardner

Buy Listen for just £6.99 with free shipping in the UK only [wp_cart:Listen:price:6.99:end]

please contact us if you want to order a book from outside the UK with your delivery details and we will advise you of the cost.

Listen is also available in many ebook formats at Smashwords

secondary character

secondary-character-front-coversecondary character and other stories

from the Welsh Short Story Network (WSSN)

Cover design and photo by Jo Mazelis

After the Cardiff readings of the WSSN last Summer we got together with Barrie Llewelyn and put a call out for short stories from the writers of Wales.

We were delighted with the response and with the quality of the stories submitted, many from established writers and some from those dipping their toes into publication for the first time. We’d love to have published every story but after a long and careful selection process the editor chose 28 stories for this collection.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2015

Now available in paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secondary-Character-Other-Stories-Wssn/dp/1904958583/ and http://www.amazon.com/Secondary-Character-Other-Stories-Wssn/dp/1904958583/

Also the ebook for the Kindle: Details here

UPDATE: August 2015

We are delighted to announce that the first book of short stories from the Welsh Short Story Network – ‘Secondary Character and other Stories’ edited by Barrie Llewelyn will be launched in Swansea and Cardiff next month.

Published by Opening Chapter with a beautiful and evocative cover design by Jo Mazelis the book features twenty-eight stories from twenty-eight writers and is a snapshot of the amazing range of short-story writing talent active in Wales today.

Launch Details

* FREE ADMISSION *

Each launch will consist of two 45 minute sessions separated by a break.

There will be readings from the stories and opportunities to chat and network

Swansea

Mozarts Bar and Venue
Wednesday September 9th 2015 at 7.30pm

followed by a special performance by acoustic trio Anni Wall

* Anni Wall are the renamed fabulous Dead Surf Country with Nico as lead singer and the addition of Anna on harp and accordion. 

Links to YouTube videos of Dead Surf Country
https://youtu.be/3LF4uxUX_t0
https://youtu.be/-Z78NeQBc2c

Mozarts
76b Walter Road
Swansea
SA1 4QA

Mozarts Facebook Page

more details soon . . .

Cardiff

First Space at the Chapter Arts Centre
Saturday September 12th 7.00pm

NOTE: This event will begin promptly at 7pm, there will be opportunities during the break and after the readings to network in Chapter’s spacious café-bar.

Chapter Arts Centre
Market Road
Cardiff

Chapter’s website

more details soon . . .

BOOK DETAILS

The twenty-eight stories collected here offer a wealth of both connection and contrast in plot, theme and style. By its nature the short story is capable of leaping into the reader’s imagination to vivid and startling effect, as demonstrated here; from the supernatural in ‘A Ghost May Come’ to the psychologically charged in ‘Marco’s Eyes’ to the poignant ‘Theft’ each story in this diverse anthology plays with both the everyday and those profound and life changing emotions of loss, jealousy and regret.

Among the compelling characters to be found in these stories is a young woman in the boot of a car, a man embarrassed by an inexplicable wound, a WWI infantryman about to meet his fate and a girl fascinated by bells… all proving that it’s very hard to make rules about what constitutes a short story.

LIST OF AUTHORS

Kay Beechey
Susmita Bhattacharya
Justine Bold
Carole Burns
Luned DeSimon
Karl Drinkwater
Frances Hay
Nic Herriot
Carly Holmes
Nigel Jarrett
John Lavin
Malcolm Lewis
Barrie Llewelyn
Jo Mazelis
Shelagh Middlehurst
Elizabeth Morgan
Lynda Nash
Kate North
Bethany W Pope
Diana Powell
Whyt Pugh
Colum Sanson-Regan
Gareth Scourfield
Danny Shyla
Thomas Stewart
Christina Thatcher
Rhys Thomas
Susie Wild

For the Time Being

ForTheTimeBeingDWJ-createspaceBook-webStories, poems, reflective pieces.

*** UPDATE: Paperback now available

Amazon UK – Amazon US

A coming together of new and some old but previously unpublished work. Scraps, odds and ends, unedited, partially edited, abandoned work in progress – and some highly polished works.

Just something ‘For the Time Being’

Expected publication date late October / early November 2014

*** UPDATE *** weirdly this has come together ahead of schedule and will now be published on October 5th 2014. It may take a few days after that for physical copies to arrive.

Here’s  couple of bits from the book to give a little taster of what’s to come:

The Black Sheep
He wasn’t much of a ram, small and weak, with no possibility of siring any of the sumptuous ewes that shared the lush green hillsides. He didn’t mind, he had his darling girl. She was tall and thin on her two legs, her hair as black and as thick as his fleece. He knew he was her favourite. Today, she hugged him longer and harder than usual and her eyes were wet with tears. Then she vanished. Later, the big man came back, grabbed his black fleece and dragged him into the back of a lorry.

————-

Visitors

The fucking mice are back. I know they’re there. They’re crawling under the fucking floorboards. The cheeky fuckers are even hiding under the settee. I saw one last night, a dark beige flash, zipping from the side of the settee towards the hole in the floorboards. It’s my own fault. There shouldn’t be a hole in the floorboards. It’s as easy as that; all you’ve got to do is give them a fucking excuse and they’re in. It doesn’t have to be anything major, a little gap in the bottom of the back door, a small crack in the floorboards, and that’s enough; that’s all they need . . . . . . . . . . (more)

Being Air Under Sky

From the deep, enigma
the source of the river
springing, sparkling
spreading its dream
flowing, glowing
a growing stream
Through the long, dilemma
the course of the river
shoaling, shining
shedding its blood
splashing, flashing
a dashing flood
To the wide, conundrum
the force of the river
scouring, scumbling
scuttling its breath
flaring, glaring
a sharing death

Made in Roath – The Book

Our Latest publication is the result of a collaboration between ourselves and 40 contributors involved with Cardiff’s Made in Roath Festival.

The festival is held in various guises throughout the year. This year the main event happens next week – links below.

Made-in-Roath-Volume-one-cover-frontMade in Roath, The Book, contains a mixture of poetry, prose, observations and photographs and provides the opportunity to take a peek into the minds, individual and collective, of the uniquely creative inhabitants of the multi-layered area of Cardiff known as Roath.

The book was conceived during a chat with the festival’s Poetry and Literature Coordinator – Christina Thatcher not long after last year’s events; and, eventually, due to Christina’s gentle persistence and hard work in collecting the contributions and editing them, the resulting book has finally manifested itself and is available worldwide – and in particular in Roath.

There’s going to be a mini-soft-launch for the book sometime at the end of next week, on Sunday 18th, the last day of this year’s festival I think. More details will be available from:

Made in Roath

Christina Thatcher

In the meantime there are more details and links to buy the book here