University of Wales Lampeter poet and librarian, Kathy Miles, is launching her latest volume of poetry on Friday 13 November 2009. Published by Cinnamon Press, The Shadow House is a collection of poems that are, according to author Gillian Clarke “rich and imaginative… layered with myth, history and personal experience”.
Kathy, who graduated in English from Lampeter in 1975, is a keen poet and short-story writer when not working in the University library. She has previously published two books, The Rocking-Stone (Poetry Wales) and The Third Day: Landscape and the Word (Gomer), and her work frequently appears in magazines and anthologies. She has twice won the One Voice Monologue Competition, and in 2008 won both the Leaf Books poetry competition and the Ilkely Literature Festival Poetry Competition. She has just been made a full member of the Welsh Academi.
Kathy is also a keen advocate of writing workshops and is a founding member of the Lampeter Writers’ Group which meets regularly on the university campus during term time. The Writers Group is open to all, and attracts both students from the University and people from the local area, some of whom come from as far afield as Brecon, Carmarthen and Pembrokeshire. Writers are encouraged to share their works, and also to publish their work in literary magazines and journals. Ex-members of the Lampeter Writers’ Group include Hilary Llewellyn Williams and other writers who now make a full-time living from their writing.
Many participants of the Lampeter Writers’ Group are students of Lampeter’s courses in creative writing. The Department of English & Creative Writing at Lampeter offers foundation level, undergraduate and postgraduate courses in creative writing and English literature and encourages students to share and test their ideas through such writing circles as well as in classroom settings.
Kathy added “Writing groups like these play an important part in the life of the local community. We have both Welsh and English members of the group, and since joining Lampeter Writers’ Group, many have had work accepted in reputable literary publications, or have been placed in national competitions. The encouragement of the group has been vital to me in my own writing, and has helped many others to develop an individual style in their work.”
