Our Bookshelf
Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.
‘One of the most exhilaratingly gifted poets of her generation.’
M. Wynn Thomas, The Guardian
‘The bracing latest collection from Welsh poet Lewis traces an arc from the trauma of maternal abuse…through aftershocks of chronic illness, self-harm, and shame…to recovery (“I am found”). Her lines both stun and revive, moving between Plathian imagery… and disarming candor (“Underneath, I’m a bit of a sweetie”). The collection radiates hard-won self-possession… Readers will enjoy discovering this writer of extraordinary gifts.’
Publishers Weekly
‘From a Welsh poet well used to crossing borders comes a sixth collection of ardour and courage. Gwyneth Lewis’s First Rain in Paradise confronts past trauma and debility through the language of invasion and bodily takeover. […] These are poems of darkness and danger – probing, unsettling, appalling. […] Difficult material rendered in unflinchingly challenging imagery, but these poems are also delightful, finding humour and pleasure where they can, as in ‘Late Blackberries’, where the final sugar-rush is relished, even if the crop’s first sweetness has been sacrificed.’
Vona Groarke, The Irish Times
‘Such exuberant invention… The range of reference is so wide, we are intoxicated by it.’
Elaine Feinstein, The Independent
‘Gwyneth Lewis’ latest poetry collection is one which navigates darkness with both weight and wit. Known for her linguistic precision and inventive forms, Lewis here crafts a landscape of interior struggle, shaped by childhood trauma and chronic illness, yet tempered by a powerful sense of resilience. […] What’s striking about First Rain in Paradise is, as with Lewis’ other books, its technical daring. Lewis doesn’t merely describe emotional landscapes: she builds them, with language that is at once painfully raw and honest yet exquisitely, expertly controlled. […] Lewis has long been a writer of rare skill, but this latest shows her at the height of her imaginative and intellectual powers.’
Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
First Rain In Paradise
First Rain in Paradise is a book about falling. Gwyneth Lewis’s highly inventive poems trace an interior landscape carved out by the trauma of childhood emotional abuse through subsequent chronic ill health and towards a hard-won resurrection. These poems are accounts of living in, and emerging from, the dark wrestle with the angel of language. Suffering does not preclude humour and may, in fact, require it, in poems written from the shadows but committed to the light.
This work refuses to keep pain a secret. Shame is a lurking presence. The book opens with ‘Spiderings’, a gothic horror sequence about the effects of maternal abuse. Then comes a descent into underworlds of debasement and debility. The third title sequence begins with a 15th-century manuscript depicting the fall of Adam and Eve, the poems presenting a portrait of a drenched, catastrophic landscape, asking how human trauma relates to a fantasy Eden.
Gwyneth Lewis has won wide acclaim for her versatile and varied writing across genres, most notably in her award-winning poetry in both English and Welsh. This book shows a deepening of her technical, imaginative and intellectual resources which are challenged and exercised to the full. The poems map uneasy terrains with realism and – most importantly – with joy.
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Bloodaxe Books (2025)
9781780377339
80pp
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Bloodaxe Books (2025)
Suzanne Fairless-Aitken - rights@bloodaxebooks.com
Reviews
‘One of the most exhilaratingly gifted poets of her generation.’
Read more reviewsM. Wynn Thomas, The Guardian