The water in the boat’s hold is five feet high, and I have a thimble for the bailing. Each
day the duty roster remains the same: I take the burden longer than any member of my
crew. Weeks pass with no appreciable progress, and at least daily the tiny steel cup slips
from my fingers, to be rescued from the murk after lost minutes, sometimes an hour. After
months, we find a shipwreck survivor on a dinghy, and in gratitude he offers me his
bucket. I throw it into the sea to show him the magnitude of my work.

by Carrie Etter

Our International Poetry Competition – judged this year by the wonderful Jackie Kay, closes for entries today! There are two categories: Open and EAL, and winners in each category receive £1000, with £200 for runners-up. For more details and to enter, visit our website. 

‘Parable’ is copyright © Carrie Etter, 2018. It is reprinted from The Weather in Normal (Seren, 2018) by permission of Seren. 

Notes from Seren:

Originally from Normal, Illinois, Carrie Etter has lived in England since 2001 and taught at Bath Spa University since 2004, where she is Reader in Creative Writing. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, The New Republic, The New Statesman, and The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. Her new collection, The Weather in Normal, is published in the UK by Seren Books and in the US by Station Hill Press. It was been chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018. Read more about the book on the  Seren website, and more about Carrie’s work here. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Seren is Wales’ leading independent literary publisher, specialising in English-language writing from Wales. Many of our books are shortlisted for – and win – major literary prizes across the UK and America. At the heart of our list is a good poem, a story told well, or an idea or history presented interestingly or provocatively. We’re international in authorship and readership, though our roots remain here in Wales, where we prove that writers from a small country with an intricate culture have a worldwide relevance. Amy Wack has been Poetry Editor since the early 90s. Our aim is not simply to reflect what is going on in the culture in which we publish, but to drive that culture forward, to engage with the world, and to bring Welsh literature, art and politics before a wider audience. Find out more on the  Seren website and via  Twitter and Facebook.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

How did you let him go?

With black ink and legalese

How did you let him go?

It’d be another year before I could vote 

How did you let him go?

With altruism, tears, and self-loathing

How did you let him go?

A nurse brought pills for drying up breast milk

How did you let him go?

Who hangs a birdhouse from a sapling?

by Carrie Etter

‘A Birthmother’s Catechism’ is copyright © Carrie Etter, 2014. It was published in Imagined Sons, and is reprinted here by permission of Seren Books. 

Notes from Seren: 

American poet Carrie Etter has lived in England since 2001 and taught creative writing at Bath Spa University since 2004. She has published three collections of poetry: The Tethers (Seren, 2009), winner of the London New Poetry Prize, Divining for Starters (Shearsman, 2011) and Imagined Sons (Seren, 2014); she also edited the anthology Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearsman, 2010). Individual poems have appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, The New Statesman, Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other journals worldwide. She also reviews contemporary poetry, most recently for The Guardian and Warwick Review.

You can read more about the book on Seren’s site, and find out more about Carrie’s work from her blog. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Writing of this collection, Carol Rumens has commented: ‘The narrator is a mother whose son was adopted soon after his birth. In the main sequence she describes a series of encounters with the now-adult child. This is not the report of a literal search, nor an effort to construct an identity, but a mosaic of the numerous possibilities of relationship. Funny at times, fast-moving and psychologically astute, these tiny monologues are held together by a narrative voice as seemingly self-possessed as it is candid.’

Seren is based in Bridgend, South Wales and was originally conceived in the early 80’s by then Head of English at Brynteg Comp, Cary Archard, on his kitchen table as an offshoot of Poetry Wales magazine. After moving briefly to poet Dannie Abse’s garage in Ogmore by Sea, the advent of Managing Editor Mick Felton has seen the press has go from strength to strength. We’ve published a wide range of titles including fiction (which under Editor Penny Thomas has seen the Booker-nominated novel by Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days, and an acclaimed novella series based on the medieval Welsh tales from the Mabinogion) and non-fiction (including literary criticism such as John Redmond’s Poetry and Privacy, as well as sumptuous art books like the collaboration between the painter Shani Rhys James and a number of poets and writers: Florilingua). Seren’s poetry list, edited by Amy Wack since the early 90s, has produced T.S. Eliot-nominated titles by Deryn Rees-Jones and Pascale Petit, Costa winner John Haynes, and a large list of Forward prize winners and nominees. Cary Archard remains on our Board of Directors and is a lively and influential presence. We mourn the loss, last year, of the wonderful Dannie Abse, also a guiding spirit. Find out more about the publisher from its website.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.