Poet
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1966)
© Sîan Trenberth
Biography
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch grew up in New Quay, Ceredigion. After reading Classics at Cambridge University, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She lived in Oxford, Paris and the Isles of Scilly before returning to New Quay. Her work has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award (2014), the Roland Mathias Prize (2013) and Wales Book of the Year (2009). Samantha has taught Creative Writing on the MSt. at Oxford University and on the MA programme at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David where she was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing in 2019.
Samantha’s poems have appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Agenda, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, the Forward Anthology and on BBC Radio 3. She has received awards for her work from the Society of Authors (2007) and Literature Wales (1997 and 2002). In 2012 Samantha was Leverhulme writer in residence at the National Wool Museum and the work resulting from this, Lime & Winter (Rack Press, 2014) was a finalist for the Michael Marks Award. In 2014 she held a residency at the Dylan Thomas Boathouse to mark the centenary of the poet’s birth and in 2015 was awarded an Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales Award. Samantha runs a writer's retreat on the Wales Coastal Path in New Quay
www.writebythecoast.co.uk www.writebythecoast.co.uk
[first published in 2008, updated November 11, 2020]
© Kathryn Gray
BibliographyStranded on Ithica (pamphlet), Redbeck Press, Bradford, 1998
Rockclimbing in Silk, Seren, Bridgend, 2001
Not In These Shoes, Picador, London, 2008
Banjo, Picador, 2012
Lime & Winter, Rack Press, 2014
Reviews
"Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's lines are full of beauty, sometimes gorgeous, sometimes stark. But this is never decoration; it is a responsible beauty, implicating us in the essential human situations, life, death and survival, she explores." - PHILIP GROSS
"There's a lovely peremptoriness in Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's poetry. She's like a nurse with a scalpel: she heals with cuts. "Feel the blade just here/at the tip. See the nicks in the flint?" she asks in 'Tomahawk'. Everything is close to the nerve, everything under cool emotional pressure. The cuts blossom into freshness and colour. And delight, the delight borne out of precision of sound and an exquisite command of register. She grows more authoritative as she goes on." - GEORGE SZIRTES
Links
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch’s home page
Visit Samantha’s website for poems and updates of events.
Three Poems at Transcript
[updated November 11, 2020]
Poems
Poems of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
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