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Kate Noakes' seventh poetry collection The Filthy Quiet launched at The Poetry Cafe in London on World Poetry Day this week, with an appreciative audience of poets and poetry lovers and flowing Côtes du Rhône. Mark Blayney (Loud Music Makes you Drive Faster) and Susie Wild (Better Houses) brought both filth and quiet in their support sets before the queen of the night, Kate Noakes, read from her deeply personal autobiographical new collection to much applause and subsequent book sales and signings. The Filthy Quiet explores the pain of losing a long-built life and the joys of exploring a new one. This...

'Susie Wild’s Better Houses announces a new, highly distinctive and exciting poetic voice. [...] The author’s balance between opening the door for the reader, and then hitting them with the poem’s highly original approach to language and a slightly slant way of looking at the world, make these poems highly entertaining and rewarding. [...] an accomplished and auspicious debut...' – Jonathan Edwards, Ink Sweat & Tears Buy Better Houses from Parthian for £8.99 About Better Houses: This lively first collection from Susie Wild introduces a poet with a nomadic spirit. She tramps with humour, love, and loss across the UK, even...

Roll up, roll up for the 22nd and very last date of the Better Houses tour in Abergavenny on Sunday 22 April at 11.30am! Susie Wild reads from her new volume of poetry, talks about writing it, and discusses questions raised by the audience. She says: ‘I will be reading from my debut poetry collection. Better Houses is about the places we inhabit in life, about relationships and the extraordinary in the everyday. It has all the key subjects: birth, death, sex, love and loss. At the book’s core, it is as much about moving house as it is about trying to...

New Welsh Review Reviewed Better Houses: Wild clearly has a sense of fun. Her poem, ‘Pub Crawl Date’ – cataloguing a nine-pint epic evening out – had me chuckling out loud. So too, ‘The Bed Testers’. But, in my view, Wild is at her best when she is more serious and, to this end, there were several stand-out poems. [...] Similarly, there is a Plath-like forensic quality to ‘The Lash Museum’ which I also really enjoyed. It opens with ‘A gutsy Cornish wind / slammed the caravan door shut, / skinning a birthmark, / my head / a blood fountain.’...

Seven dates down and the Better Houses tour for Susie Wild's debut poetry collection has already taken in Cardiff, London, Bridgend and Swansea with signings at book fairs, readings and even a literary house party. You can keep up with the tour with photos, musings and more over on her Wildlife blog.

This week the tour continues to a rather special house in Swansea, Dylan's Birthplace, for the Swansea launch of the book on Dylan Thomas's birthday.

Then onwards, onwards to cocktail bar and creative industries private members club The Square Club in Bristol to cast poetry spells at Berkeley Square Poetry Review on 31 October...