List Of Writers

PUGH, SHEENAGH

4c Romilly Road, Canton, Cardiff CF5 1FH
Tel: 029 2040 7499
Email: sheenagh@gmail.com
Website: http://sheenagh.googlepages.com/

Poet, Translator, Novelist and Critic. Born in 1950 in Birmingham, Sheenagh moved to Wales in 1971. She has published more than ten collections of verse and verse translations, as well as two novels. She won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 1998, the Welsh Arts Council’s Poem for Today Competition in 1987 and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in both 1988 and 1994.

Sheenagh has also won the Bridport Prize, the PHRAS Prize and the British Comparative Literature Association’s Translation Prize. Her poems have been included in several anthologies, notably Poems on the Underground (Weidenfled Nicholson, 1992) and The Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poetry (Hutchinson, 1989). They have also been set to music, have appeared on the trams of Helsinki and the St Petersburg Underground, and have been translated into German, French, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Spanish and Dutch.

Her collection of poems The Beautiful Lie (Seren, 2002) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize 2003 and the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Prize 2003, whilst The Movement of Bodies (Seren, 2005) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Her poems derive much of their subject matter from history, mythology and the author’s travels, particularly to Iceland.

Sheenagh also translates poems mainly from German but sometimes also from French and Ancient Greek. She read German and Russian at the University of Bristol. Her interests are language, history, northern landscapes from Shetland to the Arctic and all the points in between, but above all, people. She likes to use poems to commemorate people and places, sometimes to amuse, to have a go at things she dislikes for example, censorship, intolerance and pomposity but above all to entertain. Sheenagh lives in Cardiff with her husband, son, daughter and two cats, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan.

Reviews:
With respect to The Movement of Bodies (Seren, 2005):

"…a poet capable of dealing with difficult themes, intent on restoring threads of language where they have unravelled…"
Gerard Woodward, Poetry Review

"…all of the poems are carefully constructed and each makes its point with economy and power…"
Vernon Scannell, Daily Telegraph

"…The perspective is challenging, mischievous, perverse even. What better compliment could one give..?"
Rhys Williams, New Welsh Review

Selected Publications:
Novels
Kirstie’s Witnesses (Shetland Publishing Company, 1998)
Folk Music (Seren, 1999)

Poetry
Crowded by Shadows (Christopher Davies, 1978)
What a Place to Grow Flowers (Triskele Books, 1979)
Earth Studies and Other Voyages (Poetry Wales Press, 1982)
Beware Falling Tortoises (Seren, 1987)
Selected Poems (Seren, 1990)
Sing for the Taxman (Seren, 1993)
Id’s Hospit (Seren, 1997)
Stonelight (Seren, 1999)
The Beautiful Lie (Seren, 2002)
What If This Road and Other Poems (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2003)
The Movement of Bodies (Seren, 2005)
Long Haul Travellers (Seren, 2008)

Poetry Translations
Prisoners of Transience (Seren, 1985)

Literary Criticism
The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context (Seren, 2005)

Contributed to:
Poems on the Underground (contributor) (Weidenfled Nicholson, 1992)
The Hutchinson Book of Post-War British Poetry (contributor) (Hutchinson, 1989)

The Beautiful Lie (Seren, 2002)

The tenth collection of the poetry of Sheenagh Pugh comprising over 30 diverse poems reflecting the relationship between elements of truth and lies, and including two sequences.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover






The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context  (Seren, 2005)

A book discussing the recent development of ’fanfic’ writing in which authors bring their own gloss and invention to novels, films and TV series, developing characters, expanding narratives, and breaking conventions. This volume discusses ’fandoms’ as diverse as Jane Austen, Blake’s 7 and The Bill.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover

The Movement of Bodies (Seren, 2005)

An entertaining collection of 46 diverse poems, being the tenth volume of poems by a popular poet about a sparkling array of modern-day and historical colourful characters taken from all corners of the world. Shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize 2005 for the best new collection published in the UK in 2005.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover

 Eligible Writers on Tour Subjects Offered:
1. Read and discuss own work
2. Discussing the art of Translating Poetry
3. Fan Fiction