Festival 2021 »

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards’s first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. His poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2019, and he has received prizes in the Ledbury Festival International Poetry Competition, the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. He has read his poems on BBC radio and television and at festivals around the world, recorded them for the Poetry Archive and led workshops in schools, universities and prisons. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales, and is editor of Poetry Wales.

Jonathan Edwards

Photo: Aubrey Edwards

Events

Poetry Centre Stage »

Reading:  Jericho Brown, Jonathan Edwards

Fri 12 March | 19:30 - 20:30 | FREE | StAnza Online

Poem

My Family in a Human Pyramid

My uncle starts it, kneeling in his garden;
my mother gives a leg up to my gran.
When it’s my turn to climb, I get a grip
of my bamp’s miner’s belt, my cousin’s heels,
say Thank you for her birthday card as I go,
then bounce on my nan’s perm and skip three rows,
land on my father’s shoulders. He grabs my ankles,
half holding me up and half holding me close.

Here he comes, my godson, Samuel Luke,
passed up until he’s standing in his nappy
on my head. And now to why we’re here:
could the Edwardses together reach a height
that the youngest one of us could touch a star?
Sam reaches out. He points towards the night.

Jonathan Edwards

From My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014)