https://carreg-gwalch.cymru/seasons-in-the-sun-3008-p.aspThe following is from the publisher's website:
Author Biography:
Annest Gwilym lives in north west Wales, near the Snowdonia National Park. She is a native Welsh speaker. She has received four Special Commendations and four Shortlisteds in writing competitions in recent years. She received a Special Mention in Sentinel Literary Quarterly's poetry competition (May 2018). She was shortlisted in the Littoral Press Nature Poetry Collection Competition 2019. She was joint runner-up in the Cheshire Prize for Literature 2015, for short fiction. She was the winner of firstwriter.com's Fifteenth International Poetry Competition 2016/17. This is her third collection of poems.
This is a poetry collection by the north Wales-based poet Annest Gwilym.
The collection contains thirty-one poems of free verse which are generally focused on nature and the seasons. These form a backdrop to the poet’s personal reflections on how place has affected her life. The ocean is a repeating theme, and there is also a thread of Welsh mythology woven through the collection.
“In her new book of poems, Seasons in the Sun, Gwilym reaches out with honesty and compassion, sharpening the eyes and understanding with a sensory and versatile collection, evoking a fusion of time, people and place.” – Byron Beynon
“Reading these poems, I get a strong sense of a poet who is deeply embedded in her land and home, in her own personal history, and her present. A poet who thinks about what has been lost and what may have been. One who watches, remembers, dreams. And very much a poet who feels everything, even if she appears to be standing on the outskirts.” – Maxine Rose Munro
“The poems in this collection by Annest Gwilym offer a varied and individual insight into people and places, buildings and objects. With each poem we are invited to see and experience these things with the poet and to journey with her through the interesting and exciting landscape she draws and it is a landscape well worth exploring.” – Jim Bennett
EMC Bio: Elizabeth M. Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer, indie-press promoter, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Paris with her family and two cats, where she writes a variety of different things, in a variety of different languages, and under a variety of pen names. In her writing Elizabeth explores the different countries and cultures she grew up with, as well as themes of race & ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, loss and grief, and a touch of magical realism.
Her writing has been featured in publications and anthologies in the UK, US, Australia, Mexico and the Middle East. Her bilingual, debut collection “Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras” is for sale on Amazon, You can connect with her on Twitter, IG and TikTok as @EMCWritesPoetry, or on her website www.elizabethmcastillo.net.
‘Not Quite an Ocean’ by Elizabeth M. Castillo is a paean to the feminine, to motherhood and to the natural world. At once these poems are both unabashed in their celebration of womanhood, and are searing in their unflinching confrontation with darker undercurrents that threaten to break and destroy. The poems in ‘Not Quite an Ocean’ are beacons, are rallying calls, and are ultimately a roars of strength, pride and hope that cannot be silenced or subdued:
To be woman is to be everything
All things bound together
and, if you can manage it
that little bit more
The Cancer
The earth was held between two breasts / warm
and safe from the beasts inside / the world
was kept against her chest / milk
from one / salt water from the other / the world
was split along her middle / one half wrenched /
like a joint / from a socket / like a feeding
calf / from its mother / the other
severed / long / painful / strokes / and she cried out /
this bleeding earth / with every motion / the faultlines
cracked / the oceans stood to attention / bursting their banks /
covering the earth / only volcanoes left standing /
spitting fire and ash / from their gaping
mouths / there was no alternative / it had to be done /
letting the blood / deep from the earth’s core /
and after the rubble / after the rains / after much digging /
beneath each breast / that cradled the earth / lay the cancer /
they had buried there / long before
20th December, after Lucille Clifton
In a week I will be born
to the misplaced ambition of a woman
and a man whose feet would itch
to be anywhere but here. She will suture
me to her inner arm, there both a comfort
and a crutch, and he will censure me for it.
They will do for me and my brothers all that they can
but perhaps that is a lie.
we will plaster smiles across these infant years,
and she will live long, in spite of her best efforts.
in one week I will emerge, my small neck cordoned
and they will inhale their regret,
exhale their civil congratulations
and to their friends they will say
she is our pride and joy.Love song
I'm learning to fold myself into him, warm as he is.
My south to his north.
My mighty armies, his unbending will.
To trust myself in his arms, safe from the world (outside/inside).
To ask, and be given, is an art I've yet to master.
To take, and show gratitude, is no shameful task.
There's a strength in rupture, and a hope of new beginnings.
There's dignity in broken bones, and torn skin.
I’ve decided that I shall love him as I have never loved another.
I’m learning to listen: the gentle coax of a winter morning is his.
I’m learning to hear: the last whispered hope of the day is his.
Things that have replaced my Father
Today.
The cult of oneself. Altars,
built at sporadic hours.
Social media.
Poetry. Written in the bathtub, on my phone.
Blood.
The defacing of my body. The misplacement of
lessons learnt. Cause.
And consequence. Reinvention
A sense of justice entirely my own. An
appetite for knowledge. Paralysis. Inertia.
A hunger for travel. A howling need to run.
Ungraciousness. Self-confidence. Thunder.
The thrill of the hunt. The headlong pull of conquest.
My pathological inability to belong.
Men. At least four or five too many.
The burden of my people, whoever they are. Forgiveness.
Yes, sometimes even that can be wrong.
My father himself- his unfathomable approval.
And this dark cloud that I watch, helplessly, as it swallows him whole.
Fevers of the Mind 