Our Bookshelf
Browse our Bookshelves, selected annually by the Exchange as a window to recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.
“Lyrical and heartfelt, Dominoes weaves personal stories and inner worlds to create a powerful collection exploring identity, loss, heritage, and mental health. I admire Connor’s honesty and vulnerability when turning his experiences into art and I’m sure many will see themselves reflected in the poetry of Dominoes.”
Taylor Edmonds
"A stunning collection that is painful and joyful but turns […] this is poetry with a clear sense of purpose and place.”
Professor Charlotte Williams OBE
“This is poetry as open heart surgery – raw, revealing, exposing and utterly true.”
Jon Gower
Dominoes
A stunning debut from the 2021 Winner of Literature Wales and Firefly Press Rising Star Wales Award.
Delving into his experiences of love, loss, and growing up mixed-race in Newport, Dominoes is the debut poetry collection from award-winning multidisciplinary artist, and former Children’s Laureate Wales, Connor Allen.
Powerful and vulnerable in equal measure, questions of grief, masculinity, identity, and ethnicity all find heartfelt expression in this raw, revealing volume.
Since graduating as an actor in 2013 from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Allen has worked with several theatre companies across the UK, and has written for BBC Wales, Sherman Theatre, BBC Radio 4, and Dirty Protest. He was Children’s Laureate Wales from 2021 to 2023, from which the collection Miracles is a direct outcome.
- (2023)
Lucent Dreaming
Adolygiadau
“Lyrical and heartfelt, Dominoes weaves personal stories and inner worlds to create a powerful collection exploring identity, loss, heritage, and mental health. I admire Connor’s honesty and vulnerability when turning his experiences into art and I’m sure many will see themselves reflected in the poetry of Dominoes.”
Darllenwch fwy o adolygiadauTaylor Edmonds