Clueless Dogs

By Rhian Edwards

Brave and beautiful, this remarkable debut collection of poetry features the edgy, modern voice of an urban female. From poems of a fraught childhood in Bridgend, south Waleswhere a sensitive child escapes through imaginative gamesto works depicting student rivalries, damaged peers, and tense situations associated with teenage problems, this compilation matures with an underlying sweetness. Additional poems explore the sensual rapture of love and the clear-eyed realization of its inevitable disappointments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seren
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781854115959

Rhian Edwards

Rhian Edwards is a multi-award winning poet. Her first collection of poems Clueless Dogs (Seren) won Wales Book of the Year, the Roland Mathias Prize for Poetry and Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice. It was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Rhian’s poems have appeared in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, New Statesman, Spectator, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Arete, Prague Revue, London Magazine, Stand and Planet Magazine amongst others. Rhian is a poet and musician and has delivered over 400 stage, radio and festival performances world-wide. She lives in South Wales with her daughter.

Book preview

CLUELESS DOGS

CLUELESS DOGS

RHIAN EDWARDS

for Blake

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

Facebook: facebook.com/SerenBooks 

Twitter: @SerenBooks

The right of Rhian Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Rhian Edwards 2012

ISBN: 978-1-78172-000-4 

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover image: ‘On the Spot’ by Peter Clark. www.peterclarkcollage.com 

Printed in Bembo by the Berforts Group Ltd, Stevenage.

Ebook conversion by Flo Reynolds. 

Author’s weblinks: www.rhianedwards.co.uk 

www.myspace.com/rhianedwards

www.myspace.com/rhianedwardsmusic 

Parents’ Evening

We feel she may be cheating

at reading and spelling.

She has failed to grasp the planets 

and the laws of science,

has proven violent in games

and fakes asthma for attention.

She is showing promise with the Odyssey, 

has learned to darn starfish

and knitted a patch for the scarecrow.

She seems to enjoy measuring rain, 

pretending her father is a Beatle 

and insists upon your death

as the conclusion to all her stories.

The Hatching

Born in the airing cupboard

to the mothering pulse of the boiler, 

something cracked its own code

to unearth a second darkness,

a suddenness of space

greater than itself.

Perched on a pyramid

of folded towels and flannels

and crowned in the fragments

of its quondam world,

the fledgling broke into ugly song, 

scissoring its beak at the bars 

of a wooden planked sky.

The Petrifying Well

We lowered ourselves

into the petrifying well

where lime turned top hats

and bird’s nests to stone

and the copper