Marvin Thompson

In this anthology, writers from across Wales provide literary reflections on maps and rooms, and reveal a long held and layered relationship with place.

Road Trip is a striking first collection by a poet with illuminating and entertaining stories to tell, and an accomplished craft in using traditional and contemporary forms. As a poet of Jamaican heritage, born and raised in north London and now working as a teacher, father of mixed race children, living in south Wales, Marvin Thompson brings together all those passages of place and time in fresh and revealing ways. He explores the underbelly of race and empire in uncovering and inventing stories of his father's time in the British army. He writes with feeling of the post-industrial landscape of Wales and wonders whether this is a place he can bring up his children - though one should never assume that Thompson's poems are factually true. He uses sonnet, adapted villanelle and sestina sequences to tell utterly contemporary stories. Thompson has a refreshing, curious and honest eye that transforms and illuminates the everyday into something special and unique, but also a convincing vision of possibility.

The best of new voices in poetry, published by Nine Arches Press in conjunction with The Poetry School. Primers Vol.2 collects together three selected poets from a nationwide scheme to find exciting new voices in poetry - there's much here to delight and dazzle. Edited by Jacob Sam-La Rose and Jane Commane, this year's Primers poets:Ben Bransfield is from Shropshire. His poems have appeared in The North, Obsessed with Pipework, ASH, and have been placed in Peterloo and Wenlock competitions. He was named a Poetry Society Teacher Trailblazer in 2015, and he lives and teaches in London. Cynthia Miller is a brand strategist and Co-Director of Verve, Birmingham’s inaugural Poetry and Spoken Word Festival 2017. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2013 and has a poem forthcoming in The Emma Press Anthology of Love. Marvin Thompson was born in London to Jamaican parents, and now lives in mountainous South Wales. As well as having an MA in Creative Writing, his poems have appeared in numerous journals. These include Stand Magazine and The Poetry Review.