Milk Wood Memoir

Wynne-Rhydderch’s poetry masters a variety of styles, is intelligent, sincere, and deeply human. How lucky we are to have a guide like her – Matthew Dickman, author of All-American Poem
The sea pulls at the roots of this remarkable collection, from its coastline’s tilted houses and trees to Wynne-Rhydderch’s ancestral Milk Wood cast, her ‘lively tribe’, chronicled here with such precision and tenderness they already feel part of Welsh folklore, articulating the wit and quiet heroism of a lost generation. This is a haunting work from a unique voice in contemporary poetry – Paul Henry, author of Boy Running
Milk Wood Memoir is a tender and beautiful evocation of a seaside community. With its rich blend of history and mythology, the book draws on over a century of family and social memory. Setting off in the key of Dylan Thomas, who was shot in Ceredigion’s exotic New Quay these poems modulate into Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch’s distinctively crisp, humorous and poignant metaphysical register. The book’s subject is deep time and how we’re all immersed in it together. Surrealism is a realistic way of describing deaths and sorrows, from an inherited tortoise to the poet’s own father on his deathbed. A delight from start to finish. Pitch-perfect. – Gwyneth Lewis, Forward Prize-shortlisted author of Zero Gravity

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch is a British-Welsh poet, performer, tutor, and editor. She lives close to the sea in West Wales, where she tends an orchard and runs a writers’ retreat. Her previous poetry collections with Picador, Not in These Shoes and Banjo, were each shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year.

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