In this edition we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Seren Books, the publisher from south Wales responsible for launching the careers of many poets and for putting out a series of memorable poetry collections including a few featured previously on Alt Stories 

 In this podcast you can hear an interview with Seren’s outgoing poetry editor Amy Wack who leaves the press at the end of October 2021.  She looks back at her time with Seren and the changes to the style and readership of poetry since she joined. 

 The presenter of this podcast is Nadia Wyn Abouayen and the readers from Alt Stories are Tiffany Clare and Chris Gregory

 We feature the following poems in this podcast 

 “We are coming” by Kim Moore is taken from her recently published collection “All the men I never married” and is read by Tiffany Clare 

 “Yet, he remembers Baghdad” by Abeer Ameer from the 2021 collection “Inhale / Exile” read by Tiffany Clare 

 “Air Camera” by Christopher Meredith from his collection “Still” is read by Chris Gregory

 “Wrack of Summer” is taken from Polly Atkin’s latest collection “Much With Body” and is read by Tiffany Clare 

 “Karaoke King” is the title poem of Dai George’s latest collection which came out in June.  The reader is Chris Gregory. 

 “Paean for a cliff railway driver” is written and read by Paul Henry and is taken from the upcoming collection “As if to sing” to be published by Seren in 2022

 From the collection “Let Me Tell you What I saw” by Adnan Al Sayegh, the recording we include features the voice of translator Jenny Lewis reading the text in English whilst Adnan Al Sayegh reads the original Arabic version.  The music in the background is called “The Moon Fades” and it is reproduced here with the kind permission of Naseer Shamma Production, sound design, editing and music are by Chris Gregory unless stated.  We would like to thank Sarah Johnson of Seren Books for her invaluable help in the making of this podcast and Amy Wack for sharing her thoughts on her time at Seren with us.  We’d also like to thank all of the contributing poets for allowing us to use their poems.

 If you would like to find out more about Seren Books and buy the collections featured you can do so by visiting the press’s website here  https://www.serenbooks.com/

You can also follow Seren on social media here 

https://twitter.com/SerenBooks

https://www.instagram.com/serenbooks/

 You can also follow our featured poets 

Kim Moore https://twitter.com/kimmoorepoet

Polly Atkin https://twitter.com/pollyrowena

Abeer Ameer https://twitter.com/hijjabi

Paul Henry https://www.paulhenrypoet.co.uk/

Dai George http://daigeorge.com/

Christopher Meredith https://christophermeredit9.wixsite.com/website

Adnan Al-Sayegh http://adnanalsayegh.com/eng/

 Please follow Alternative Stories on twitter at https://twitter.com/StoriesAlt for information on our upcoming drama, poetry and fiction podcasts as well as our workshops and writer / publisher services