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Rarebit
Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month January 2014
Celebrating Parthian's 21st birthday in 2014, this beautiful limited edition anthology of twenty one contemporary stories offers a kaleidoscope of identities, perspectives and settings which encapsulate much that is vibrant and exciting about modern Welsh short fiction.
Featuring established and prize-winning authors alongside new voices, this collection aims to showcase an exciting array of our alumni, friends and emerging talents.
Writers in the collection include Wales Book of the Year winners Deborah Kay Davies and Rhian Edwards, the EFG Sunday Times short story prize shortlisted Roshi Fernando, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction nominee Robert Lewis, Dylan Thomas Prize winner Rachel Trezise, Terry Hetherington Young Writer’s Award winner Joâo Morais, Media Wales People’s Prize winner Tyler Keevil, National Eisteddfod Literature Medal winner Siân Melangell Dafydd.
Many of the stories examine cultural and combative conflict, the action moving from a Cardiff Black Friday to video stores, hotel rooms, restaurants, traveller sites, parks, gardens, amusement arcades, festivals and forests at home and abroad.
Original artwork has been created for each story by John Abell, winner of the Print Prize and overall runner-up at Welsh Artist of the Year 2013.
- GenresShort Stories
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
36 people want to read
About the author
Susie Wild
10 books23 followersSusie Wild is the author of the poetry collections Windfalls (Parthian, 2021) and Better Houses (Parthian, 2017), the short story collection The Art of Contraception (Parthian, 2010), listed for the Edge Hill Prize, and the novella Arrivals (Parthian, 2011).
Windfalls (Parthian, 2021):
‘“A chase of messages illuminates my screen/through the small hours.” So begins Susie Wild’s new collection, and among things that are fascinating here are the messages these powerful, beautifully crafted poems bring us. From an interaction with a violent taxi driver to the experiences of a mistreated mother to a “whirlwind love” for a husband, this collection understands the power of lyric poetry to bring us real and raucous life. The poems are endlessly engaging, individually and in the ability of the writer to create sequences and consider the emotional arc of a collection. I’m reminded how now, more than ever, there’s nothing like poetry to cut down the spaces between us, to leap across gaps, make a friend of a stranger. Just as, in 'The Starfish,' there’s a commitment to “slowly … fix the broken things,” so these poems show us, again and again, how something of the greatest importance can be crafted from the chaos that life does.’ – Jonathan Edwards
‘Her poems are beautiful, even when tackling difficult subjects, and arresting without feeling over-ornamented or inflated. Above all, they shine with authenticity - perhaps because she has a magpie’s appetite for glimpsed moments...’ – Jenny White, The Western Mail
'Wild comes across as the poetic equivalent of Jean Rhys: wry, arch, a little world-weary but, unlike Rhys, with a sparkling glint of humour... A very affecting collection of poems indeed.' – Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
Better Houses (Parthian, 2017):
'These poems are spells whose words bewitch the ordinary and transform the objects and routines of our human world with their word-magic.' – Gillian Clarke
'The world shifts and transforms itself in these subtly disconcerting poems: words into bees, surgical stitches into mascaraed eyelashes, a fossil oyster into a lover's toenails. The effect can be darkly sinister or exuberantly witty, but it's always new and refreshing. This is an exciting and assured poetic debut.' – Matthew Francis
‘Susie Wild writes with poise and precision about the places we inhabit, casting a benevolent spell over her reader.’ – Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
'The voice is concentrated, urgent; the material is often tender, even domestic. There is no contradiction in this. The poems come from raw edges of the spaces between people, and a sense of how provisional the tender things can be.' – Philip Gross
'Poems carefully built to be inhabited.' – Cynan Jones
'Susie Wild’s Better Houses announces a new, highly distinctive and exciting poetic voice. [...] The author’s balance between opening the door for the reader, and then hitting them with the poem’s highly original approach to language and a slightly slant way of looking at the world, make these poems highly entertaining and rewarding. [...] an accomplished and auspicious debut...' – Jonathan Edwards, Ink Sweat & Tears
'reels gorgeously from a restaurant to the seashore to the night sky [...] an unfinished journey through the experiences and signs that tell us we're home.' – Elizabeth Edwards, Planet International
'exuberant and smart [...] Half-remembered, half-invented, but wholly charismatic.' – Sophie Baggott, Wale
Windfalls (Parthian, 2021):
‘“A chase of messages illuminates my screen/through the small hours.” So begins Susie Wild’s new collection, and among things that are fascinating here are the messages these powerful, beautifully crafted poems bring us. From an interaction with a violent taxi driver to the experiences of a mistreated mother to a “whirlwind love” for a husband, this collection understands the power of lyric poetry to bring us real and raucous life. The poems are endlessly engaging, individually and in the ability of the writer to create sequences and consider the emotional arc of a collection. I’m reminded how now, more than ever, there’s nothing like poetry to cut down the spaces between us, to leap across gaps, make a friend of a stranger. Just as, in 'The Starfish,' there’s a commitment to “slowly … fix the broken things,” so these poems show us, again and again, how something of the greatest importance can be crafted from the chaos that life does.’ – Jonathan Edwards
‘Her poems are beautiful, even when tackling difficult subjects, and arresting without feeling over-ornamented or inflated. Above all, they shine with authenticity - perhaps because she has a magpie’s appetite for glimpsed moments...’ – Jenny White, The Western Mail
'Wild comes across as the poetic equivalent of Jean Rhys: wry, arch, a little world-weary but, unlike Rhys, with a sparkling glint of humour... A very affecting collection of poems indeed.' – Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
Better Houses (Parthian, 2017):
'These poems are spells whose words bewitch the ordinary and transform the objects and routines of our human world with their word-magic.' – Gillian Clarke
'The world shifts and transforms itself in these subtly disconcerting poems: words into bees, surgical stitches into mascaraed eyelashes, a fossil oyster into a lover's toenails. The effect can be darkly sinister or exuberantly witty, but it's always new and refreshing. This is an exciting and assured poetic debut.' – Matthew Francis
‘Susie Wild writes with poise and precision about the places we inhabit, casting a benevolent spell over her reader.’ – Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
'The voice is concentrated, urgent; the material is often tender, even domestic. There is no contradiction in this. The poems come from raw edges of the spaces between people, and a sense of how provisional the tender things can be.' – Philip Gross
'Poems carefully built to be inhabited.' – Cynan Jones
'Susie Wild’s Better Houses announces a new, highly distinctive and exciting poetic voice. [...] The author’s balance between opening the door for the reader, and then hitting them with the poem’s highly original approach to language and a slightly slant way of looking at the world, make these poems highly entertaining and rewarding. [...] an accomplished and auspicious debut...' – Jonathan Edwards, Ink Sweat & Tears
'reels gorgeously from a restaurant to the seashore to the night sky [...] an unfinished journey through the experiences and signs that tell us we're home.' – Elizabeth Edwards, Planet International
'exuberant and smart [...] Half-remembered, half-invented, but wholly charismatic.' – Sophie Baggott, Wale
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 24, 2016
Some of these stories gave me the feels, most memorable being Mangleface by Tyler Keevil. Also great art by Abell of course.
February 27, 2017
Tasty bite of Rarebit this. Mixed bag but like pick a mix there's always something I do like in there.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews