• Padrika Tarrant's collection of short fiction – Broken Things – has been long-listed for the Frank O'Connor prize for short fiction. There is dedicated blog at http://saltfrankoconnorprize.blogspot.com/ – and you can also find some of Padrika's material, including podcasts at http://saltfrankoconnorprize.blogspot.com/2008/05/play-coffinwood-7.html
• And Gwilym Williams (last heard of sitting on top of a mountain in the Alps to avoid the Euro 2008 soccer crowds) has his first collection out. Called Genteel Messages (approx 60 pages) you can buy it online via Paypal for £5.25 + £1.00 p&p from the Poetry Monthly press at www.poetrymonthly.com/page46.html – we've included a copy of the cover artwork, Gwilym's into to the collection, and one of the poems.
In the Park
On the grass someone is sleeping;
I think it’s a woman.
I think she’s asleep
under that green plastic sheet
directly in front of that bench
by the drinking fountain; supermarket
bags arranged on the seat.
But I don’t want to wake her and ask her.
No doubt they contain the usual things;
old magazines, broken biros, newspaper,
a curl of orange peel, two or three cans
of beer, a scattering of bent or broken
cigarettes, smelly clothes, tangled string;-
you know the sort of thing.
Nearby a man and some children play;
wrestling on a heap of bouncy blocks.
• from Genteel Messages by Gwilym Williams
