A debut collection by emerging poet, Sarah Coles

“One of the best debut poetry collections of recent years” John Barnie

Here and the Water is a collection of lyrical poetry inspired by the physical boundaries of the Welsh landscape and the fragile webs that intertwine human relationships.

This exciting debut collection of poems by emerging poet Sarah Coles embraces life’s joys and complexities, wherever they appear. Sometimes they’re at the seaside, or in the garden, other times in the city and its back lanes, and many of them are encountered on exhibitions with her children. But even in the company of others, she often travels alone.

The poems express the struggle to accept the losses and changes within the complexities of love, particularly between mother and child.  However, a fascination for the extraordinary within everyday life is present throughout, making the losses more bearable and the changes as natural as the seasons.

Inspired by loss, love and the poet’s homeland of Wales, her portrayal of family relationships, and of love and loneliness, is both touching and incisive, and her engagement with the beauty and darkness of the natural world, can be both sensuous and unsettling. But her experiences are real and accessible ones, episodes and observations with which we can all identify.

Sarah Coles was born and brought up in Swansea, and lives in Dunvant with her three daughters. She gained a master’s degree in Creative and Media Writing from Swansea University and is currently a teacher and PhD student. Writing poetry, fiction and reviews, her work has appeared in Planet magazine. Sarah Coles was also one of the contributors to the first ever Welsh national anthology of Haiku, Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales, published by Gomer Press in 2011.

Here and the Water is available from

all good bookshops and online retailers.

For more information, please visit www.gomer.co.uk