George Sandifer-Smith
George Sandifer-Smith is a Welsh poet, originally from Pembrokeshire. He has published two books of poetry, Empty Trains (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and Nights Travel at the Right Speed (Infinity Books UK, 2022). He is currently the Reviews Editor at Poetry Wales Magazine, a position he has held since 2022. He has previously edited the poetry anthology The Wait in aid of Cancer Research, and also was guest poetry editor for the inaugural issue of Abergavenny Small Press Journal. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Wales, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Stockholm Review, New Welsh Review, Atrium, and numerous anthologies including Poems from Pembrokeshire (Seren Books, 2019), Hit Points – an Anthology of Video Game Poetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), and Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare (Broken Sleep Books, 2023).
In 2019, he was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing by Aberystwyth University. As well as writing poetry, he has also published fiction with Gwyllion Magazine and Inventive Podcast (Overtone Productions, 2021). His first children’s book, Cholloo’s Birthday, a collaboration with artist Julia Ashby Smyth, was published by Lily in 2014. He lives with his wife, and their rescue cat Deli.
Empty Trains
Empty Trains looks at the notion of spaces altering to accommodate changes introduced during the pandemic. While avoiding the pitfalls of Covid poetry, Sandifer-Smith deftly traces the poetics of space into a contemporary setting. Empty Trains does more than offer a frame through which to view such spaces: it challenges us to look at the spaces in which we live, work, and think with fresh eyes.
The Wait
From the fall of Troy to the Martian sands, and from microwaves to mammograms, The Wait is a collection of one hundred poems covering a swelling gyre of human, and sometimes less human, experiences, from previously unpublished poets to established veterans of the literary world. The profits from the sales of this independently published volume will go entirely to Cancer Research.
These Pages Sing: Autumn 2024
Published in 2024 Autumn 2024 Issue of These Pages Sing Literary Magazine: a curated collection of poetry and short fiction from writers with a Welsh connection. Autumn 2024 Wordsmiths: Sue Moules, Gareth Writer-Davies, Carolyn Thomas, George Sandifer-Smith, Sheila Jacob, Catrin Mari, Sue Regan, Angela Graham, Elizabeth Lockwood, Angela Arnold, Charly White, M.R.Smith, Barbara Hughes-Moore, Guinevere Clark, Catrin Lawrence, Rebecca Elizabeth Roberts, Rosy Adams, Jonah Jones. Cover Illustrated by Kornelia Urbaniak.
Nights Travel at the Right Speed
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, trees, The Moth Box never forgets what it is to be human.
Gwyllion, Issue #4
Gwyllion can be many things. The ghosts and spirits that haunt the halls at twilight, the dusk wanderers up to no good. The scoundrels and the miscreants. The wise old fae who take no nonsense from humans. Hags and witches, wisps and sprites, the gwyllion are every malevolent trickster that wanders the night in search of mischief.
Eight Arch Blues
Composed in a series of correspondences between George Sandifer-Smith and John C Lloyd during late 2020, this chapbook is an oil of memory and dream afloat an ocean of pandemic. From poems on abstraction and morality to solid pieces rooted in the poets’ childhood home of Pembrokeshire, this short collection seeks evocation in the physical, and to tell stories where people and imagination meet.