Tôpher Mills
Working class, poet and inconsolable Cardiffian. My new and selected poems,’Sex on Toast’ is available from Parthian.
- What the hell is this? Is it a memoir, a history, a handbook for poets, a guide to publishing or advice on how to write when your muse has died? Whatever he writes about Finch is always so engaging, fallibly human and unfailingly humorous. A book destined to become essential reading for writers.
- A revealing book full of clever, funny poems that often use Polari, the secret language used when homosexuality was a crime. There’s an enthusiastic delight in the poets use of these linguistically intriguing words. Jeremy Dixon is not just commemorating Polari but reclaiming and celebrating it.
- Thatcher grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. We’re taken into the heart of that world, filled with a strong mother, hard work, young love, horses, bronco riding women and the harsh beauty of the wild. An extraordinary book that captivates with passion, honesty and whip crack intensity.
- Taliesin, so little is known about this sixth century bard, this book will undoubtedly be the classic work on him, his poetry and his huge influence on literature. The introduction is brilliant . One of the first poets of ancient Britain we know of so this is where it starts for us.
- 1995: Hay Festival. Left to right, Paul Muldoon, Glyn Maxwell, Russell Celyn Jones, Simon Armitage, Jo Shapcott, Alison (one of Simon’s many wives) and the ever dapper (not the up and saucer) Hugo Williams. When we were all young and exciting poets!
- Passionate, scathing, rigorous and woefully funny. This book is some of the best writing about Welsh politics and the wider world of political mayhem, that I have encountered. Highly readable I felt angry, sad and often dumbfounded. I got though it because I often found myself laughing out loud.
- Intriguing, enthralling and intellectually abrasive, these poems range across the European and African continents, mixing literary sensibilities with an exhilarating and surrealist panache. This is a powerful and unique poet.
- Just finished ‘The Long Goodbye’, the longest of Chandler’s great novels which I have been delightfully wallowing in one after the other. I love the photo on this one; ‘Arrested for Bribing Basketball Players’ by the great Weegee, 1942. Such classic hoodlum types that Marlowe would have encountered.
- Two great books of working life arrived today from Smokestack. Fred Voss poems of working in machine shops in America have become classics and Martin Hayes is almost his alter-ego in minimum wage, fag end Britain. A perfect combo for Christmas!
- So this year I saw Martin Figura reading his poems with a certain gentle panache and now I’ve polished off two of his books and they are my kind of poetry, deft, passionate and sardonic humour. I’ll definitely be reading more. Bloody marvellous!
- Years ago my dad asked me to get a book; ‘it’s called The Colour of Magic’. ‘Who’s the author?’ ‘Don’t know.’ I had to go into town to a bookshop and ask. I read it quickly then gave it to my dad, who read it to his grandchildren. We’ve all been Pratchett fans since then. This is a marvellous book.
- My mum died in 2022 and this book captures that grief profoundly. It’s anger, confusion, sadness and humour etc. One long poem called ‘Arrival’ about being in your parent’s home after they’re death is a tour de force that is stunningly good.
- Event location changed to The Packet, the oldest pub in Cardiff Bay (or the Docks as it is known to some of us), a great place.
- Does this cover repulse you? Never mind all the shortlisted nonsense, this is a book of wonders, I’ve read and re-read some of these poems rapturously, and yet many will be put off by the cover, the innate fear of creepy crawlies!
- Many years ago I performed at the Casablanca Club and now I’ll be at the Casablanca Cafe, with the brilliant Durre Shahwar. These are such great nights I’m lucky to be asked. I’ll be doing some new stuff too!
- Poetry and Sexism, it sounds like heavy going but I romped through this highly readable book. At times uncomfortable, especially if you’re a man, the truth being a bitter pill etc., but it’s honest, insightful and even inspiring. One of those works all poets should read.
- Waterstones Cardiff is rumoured to be the busiest bookshop in Wales and in the classic science fiction section among the greats there’s this Powell guy? Obviously a display lackey’s mistake but don’t worry I have quilled a stern letter of complaint!
- Face out for Christmas! In @waterstones.bsky.social they had a load of these but whenever I go in I always put my books face out now this is the last one! Also did the same for my fellow Parthian authors, cheeky Kate North and the scurrilous Natalie Holborow. It’s a small thing but it works!
- What if Jack Reacher was Scottish and he lived in Cardiff’s dock lands working as a private investigator? From a missing teenager to the seedy underbelly of the Welsh capital city, this has terrific pace and verve. It’s good in all the wrong ways!
- I just love this cover image by the artist Daniel Pitin. Why do some covers just make you want to buy the book? The contents; Dark Czech poems in an Eastern European style that is sparse and sensually existential, also helps, but without that cover, luring me, I may have just passed it by!
- Is this the first dialect anthology from Welsh writers in Cymraeg and English? It’s a great selection of linguistically marvellous and ‘reelee stonkin’ poems!
- Here’s a piece I wrote to celebrate the publication of Wild Cherry; Selected Poems by Nigel Jenkins. t.co/wBN91HILId
- Late 1970’s chopper squad and yeah that’s me on the front!
- You don’t get many poetry books on cycling oriented themes but this is one of them. Great book but you do, at least, have to have seen a cycle race somewhere, even on TV, to get what it’s all about.
