Gareth Writer-Davies
Gareth Writer-Davies Gareth Writer-Davies is from Pencelli, Wales. His work has been recognized multiple times in various competitions, including being shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2014 and 2017. He was also commended in the Prole Laureate Competition in 2015 and 2021, and was named the Prole Laureate for 2017. Gareth received commendations in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2015 and was highly commended in 2017. In 2023, he won the Wirral Festival Poetry Competition and was the runner-up in the Spelt Poetry Competition. In 2024, he was the runner-up in the Mid Wales Poetry Prize. Gareth was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2019. His published works include Bodies (2015) and Cry Baby (2017) by Indigo Dreams. He has also published The Lover’s Pinch (2018), The End (2019), and Wysg (2022) by Arenig Press. Your browser does not support the audio element. Read More… Wysg In WYSG Gareth Writer-Davies is instantly recognisable, as he navigates the borderlands of Wales, seeking to bridge the new and the familiar; the streaming of our lives, our conflicts with nature, getting older and always, where we have been and where we are going? Katherine Stansfield: “In these sharply-worked, elegant poems, Gareth Writer-Davies takes the reader on a voyage of mid Wales which invites us to see this landscape in a vivid light. Along sheep paths and riverways, up mountains and through churchyards, the body attempts to ‘catch what the water is saying’. An engaging iconoclasm ripples through the rivers and lakes of these poems – this watery, hilled place often offers up darkly funny conciliations for those who explore. Poems have a quiet insistence on being present in this place of water and ruins which resolutely reminds human beings of our transitory position and of nature’s deep presence. Watched by sheep and owls, wagtails and otters, kites and trout and the effigies of long-dead knights, we roam and return in this rich world. Though we find we’re ‘no good shepherd’ for this place, we keep walking, keep listening, and there is so much that we can learn.” The End Poems from the edge of annihilation, leavened with black humour and pastiche, musings upon poetry and posterity even as death beckons. The Lover’s Pinch Gareth Writer-Davies fleshes out his twin subjects of love and sex in poems of affection, sardonic humour and a characteristic lightness of touch that makes his first collection both exceptionally readable and an intimate pleasure. Summer 2020 | Vo. 56 Issue 1 | Tryweryn at 55 Featuring writing from: Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Gareth Prior, Jeni Williams, Jon Gower, Moniza Alvi, Cris Paul, Nerys Williams, David Clarke, David Morley, Anna Woodford, Huw Jones, Llŷr Lewis, Joanna Ingham, Michael McKimm, Helen Tookey, Jannat Ahmed, Mari Ellis Dunning, Michael Arnold Williams, Tishani Doshi, Philip Gross, David Briggs, Carrie Etter, Nicholas McGaughey, Gareth Writer-Davies, Bryony Littlefair, Sampurna Chattarji, Luke Samuel Yates, Jon Stone, Kathy Miles, Benjamin Palmer, Ifor Thomas, Rob Miles, Paul Henry, Dai George, John Greening, Kirsten Irving, P.C. Evans. Edited by Jonathan Edwards. Read Wysg Read The End Read The Lover’s Pinch Read Poetry Wales