We are loving the responses that we're receiving to Ness Owen's second poetry collection Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim. A perfect read for the summer months.
Rooted in her island home of Ynys Môn (Anglesey), Owen examines the ebb and flow of an ever-changing world around her. Starlings fall from the sky, votes are cast, a village is drowned, a petrified forest is revealed and messages wash up in seaworn bottles on the shoreline, waiting for answers that will not come.
Watch Ness Owen read her poem How we glow below!
Ness Owen reads How we glow from enchanting poetry collection MOON JELLYFISH CAN BARELY SWIM #poetrytwitter #poetryreading #ecopoetry pic.twitter.com/PUZHL9LUYm
— Parthian Books (@parthianbooks) June 13, 2023
"The rhythm and rhyme of these poems fills the mouth like salt from a sea breeze, creating a folkloric musicality. Owen uses sound to wake up the reader's ear early on, so that when she expresses the importance of language - in particular, the oppressed Welsh language - as the music of a place, 'a window into a world' (Notes on a vowel hungry language), the reader agrees" - Ellora Sutton, Mslexia
'Sometimes there are places
we must go to touch the
edge of the water'
"Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim is exemplary at using a clear (and rather clever) metaphor to shape a collection instead of suffocating it. Ness Owen's words are colourful and deep, and she manages to cover a wide breadth of topics without losing the heart and core symbolism of the collection." - Ceri-Anne Gatehouse The Welsh Agenda
"Owen has written a challenging and contemporary collection of poetry here. Full of contrasts, images, and ideas. She uses deceptively simple images and themes from nature and north Wales, and raises questions and issues to which she doesn’t always provide answers. This is poetry as an active tool and not simply a linguistic mirror to society. Moon jellyfish can barely swim, but Ness Own knows exactly what she’s doing." - A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Books Council of Wales.
You can read the full reviews in the latests issues of Mslexia, Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin and The Welsh Agenda.
Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim is available from all good bookshops or order direct from us with just 99p UK postage.
Happy Reading!
