Karen Hayes created this cycle of poems as a fictional social landscape inspired by a row of houses along the coastal wall at the Parrog, near the small town of Newport in Pembrokeshire. Each house appears in the poem with its actual name, whether in Welsh or English, but its history and inhabitants have been fictionalised and the details in the poems, although sometimes corresponding to a particular photograph or phrase, are entirely imaginary. The poems also serve to preserve the original houses along the wall in our memory as the author realised that increasingly tourism saved the area from falling into complete disrepair but also drove away the local population. The poems chart the simultaneous decay and preservation of a way of life through a mixture of snippets of conversation overheard in shops, fragments of local myths and legends which occur in photos and journals in the houses, conversations in local pubs about incomers and economic exiles, the poignant story of the disappearance and presumed murder of Suzy Lamplugh and, above all the way that her own children all grew up together across almost twenty summers.

About the Author
Karen spent the early part of her working life as an actor and musician and became an ensemble member and lyricist and later artistic director of the Bristol-based theatre collective Public Parts. From theatre she moved towards lyric and libretto writing and poetry and found herself creating verbatim texts with marginalised groups, most particularly with people living with dementia. She has produced two anthologies of `dementia poetry' as well as two opera libretti and a song cycle, each dealing with aspects of living with dementia, the fading of memory and the poetic language which evolves from the experience. I Had an Angel, written with composer John O'Hara, was produced live and also as an opera film for WNO. The Bargee's Wife, also written with John O'Hara, was produced as a community Opera for the 3 Choirs Festival as was their song cycle I Can Hear You Waiting. Most recently she created a libretto for an Oratorio with composer Thomas Johnson The Street of Bugles which was performed at the 3 Choirs Festival and a cycle of poetry to accompany an arts installation A Cargo of Curiosities with fellow writer and film-maker Chris salt. She was Charles Causley poet-in-residence at Cypress Well in 2016. In 2017, her poem The Belgians won the Foreign Voices competition. More information is available from http://www.hollandparkpress.co.uk/hayes


Book Information
ISBN 9781907320781
Author Karen Hayes
Format Paperback
Page Count 50
Imprint Holland Park Press
Publisher Holland Park Press