The £20,000 award for writers aged 39 or under goes to Joy Is My Middle Name, a collection about navigating race, addiction and womanhood A debut poetry collection with themes including race, addiction and womanhood has won this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize . American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney took home the £20,000 prize – awarded to writers aged 39 or under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age – for her debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name. She was announced as the winner at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas’s birthplace. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ptjb3ka
Sherman theatre, Cardiff Connor Allen’s autobiographical show is a twister that winds in everything from gothic mystery to therapy sessions in an ambitious, rather incoherent mix Connor Allen’s autobiographical show features plenty of smoke and mirrors, literal and figurative. Smoke swirls from a pit on a darkened stage, jagged mirrors stand like rocks across it. It is an emotionally anguished play featuring a mixed-heritage protagonist (played by Allen) who has been abandoned by his Jamaican father and raised by his Welsh mother. His inability to forgive his father takes him back to Jamaica where he experiences a psychic watershed. This twister of a drama shifts ambitiously in form and tone, sliding between gothic thriller, family psychodrama and standup-style direct address at one point when Allen interacts with the audience with tipples of gin in warmly comic tones. At Sherman theatre, Cardiff , until 23 May Continue reading... from The Guardian htt...