Cwrtnewydd Scribblers Writer's Group
Creating worlds with words.
Sue is a poet and freelance journalist. She has lived in Wales since 1976 and has been actively involved in literature, including helping run and edit a magazine. She also founded and chaired a writers' workshop.
Recently Sue was made Honno's poet of the month. She tells us a bit about it below.
This is the second time I’ve been Honno Poet for July. The first time was in July 2012.
I am especially pleased as back in 1986 I bought one of the first Honno shares, along with many other poets and writers to enable Honno to be set up as a Welsh women’s co-operative publishing company.
Follow Sue's blog on http://www.suemoules.blogspot.com/
The Moth Box
click on the picture to purchase
Landscape and nature take centre stage in this practised collection. Here we have a bird's or perhaps moth's eye view of the natural world and the ways in which we interact (and often fail to interact) with it.
The Moth Box also interrogates our various environments: ecological, linguistic, national even astrological and philosophical. Camouflage, too, plays a role; certainly with creatures such as the eponymous moth, but also the disguises in which we cloak ourselves.
This is a collection teeming with life, but for all the cats, moths, birds and trees, The Moth Box never forgets what it is to be human.
THE EARTH SINGING ISBN: 978-1-907276-46-0 (Lapwing) £8.00 is now available from Amazon and other good bookshops or direct from Sue via the contact page.
IN THE GREEN SEASCAPE – Sue Moules (Lapwing) £7.95
"Sue Moules underscores the portraits, memories and close observations of her changing world with a sense of life's brevity, its 'wave/against the shortening beach.' A genuine humanity illuminates In The Green Seascape." - PAUL HENRY
"There is much to admire in these quiet yet vibrant meditations. The poet's ready command of form and language is illuminated by sharp observations." - JULIE RAINSBURY
MIRROR IMAGE-A DOUBLE COLLECTION
Sue Moules and Norma E Jones (Headland) £7.95
"In these vibrant poems we have a rich tapestry where even the underside is carefully woven and deserves to see the light. I like the very vivid sense of colours, rich throughout the volume." - MENNA ELFYN
"Sue Moules's poems combine a poet's eye for the small details of domestic life with deep interest in histories both personal and universal. Her lyrical imagery and her empathy with lives fulfilled and unfulfilled mean that her work is delightfully aware of the numinous beyond the everyday." - ELIN AP HYWEL
Buy Sue's Anthologies
Both volumes available from Sue Moules,
44 Maesyderi, Lampeter, Ceredigion,SA48 7EP for £15 + £1.50 postage
Single copies of either book available for £7.95 + £1 postage.
For more information about her latest publications, email Sue
- In The Green Seascape (Lapwing) 2009
- Mirror Image (Headland) 2009 with Norma E. Jones
- In The Dreamtime (Flarestack 2006)
- The Copyright of Land (NPF Publications, 2000)
- Work (contributor) (Katabasis, 1998)
- The Whispering Room (contributor) (Kingfisher, 1996)
- Poetry Wales 25 Years (contributor) (Seren, 1995)
- Exchanges (contributor) (Honno, 1990)
- Facial Landscapes (Aquila, 1989)
- Metaphors (Spectrum, 1986)
- Poets Against Apartheid (contributor) (CND Cymru, 1986)
- Patterns (Outcrop, 1982)
- Echoes (Outcrop, 1981)
Below are some examples of Sue's work.
IN THE ARCHIVE
Tonight, from the sound archive, this interlude:
two voices, thirty years dead,
drone ghostly crackles
into our living room.
They have broken through clear digital music,
edited to make it more perfect than performance.
These moth voices touch wings,
discuss craft and the structure of sound.
Preserved words are shapes,
ideas that ring in this damp room,
where foxgloves droop in heavy silence.
That slight sour smell,
a cold mustiness seeps through the wireless,
shrouded in archive dust.
****
JOSHUA ON THE OAK TREE SWING
Joshua sways on the rope swing
through the July air,
in the yellow light of irises,
the purple crimson of foxgloves.
The oak tree is dancing inland
anchored by its platformed house.
It brings its shiny palms of leaves,
their shadows of brown winter.
Joshua swings all day:
he twists the rope and spins,
distorts the colours of land and sky.
Under his feet cuffed buttercup grass.
He climbs the ladder into the look-out house,
sees far out over sheep and hills,
surveys foxglove land, climbs down to earth,
runs back shouting:“I like it here, l like this Wales.”
****
EISTEDDFODD WEEK IN LAMPETER
On the field the BBC cube
is sound-proofed,
presenters’ immaculate profiles,
unruffable in sharp-pressed clothes.
The night is darkening,
yet studio lights keep the T.V.
agog with the news it creates
in this usually quiet community
among the hills.
The town has become an imagination
fresh and crisp as cornflakes.
Money spills along the streets
in squashed litter ,broken plastic tumblers,
dark stains of food.
Pubs overflow onto the streets,
drought dusts our feet with parched earth.
Expectant autumn is perched
on the horizon,
waits with cold downpour.
©copyrightsuemoules2009
Follow this link to Sue's page. http://www.joanmoules.co.uk/sue/index.html