Owen Sheers – författare

Introduced and selected by the poet-presenter Owen Sheers, A Poet's Guide to Britain is a major poetry anthology in its own right.Owen Sheers passionately believes that poems, and particularly poems of place, not only affect us as individuals, but can have the power to mark and define a collective experience - our identities, our country, and our land. Under the headings of six varieties of British landscape - London and Cities, Villages and Towns, Mountains and Moorland, Islands, Woods and Forest, and Coast and Sea - he has collected poems that evoke qualities of the land, city and sea and have become part of the way we see these landscapes. The anthology follows a similar format to the BBC series, while also supplementing the poems included in the programme with his own personal favourites.

When Owen Sheers discovers a book in his father's study he stumbles upon the life of an obscure relative: Arthur Cripps, lyric poet and maverick missionary to Rhodesia. Compelled by the description of Cripps' extraordinary life in Africa, Sheers embarks on a journey through contemporary Zimbabwe in an attempt to better understand his ancestor's devotion to the country and its people and the dramatic, often bloody, differences that echo across the years.

Unicorns, Almost portrays the short life of World War II poet Keith Douglas, from his childhood through four engagements to his fighting in the Western desert, his accelerated education as a poet and his early death three days after the Normandy D-Day landings at the age of twenty-four. It is the story of his Faustian pact with a war that would nurture his unique poetic voice before taking it away. It is also the story of his desperate race to see his poems in print.Widely recognised as the finest poet of World War Two, Keith Douglas was championed by Ted Hughes as an important influence. Hughes wrote the introduction to Douglas's Collected Poems, published by Faber.Unicorns, Almost by Owen Sheers opened at The Swan Hotel, Hay-on-Wye, in May 2018.

This paperback edition has been fully updated to include the 2013 Six Nations and the British and Irish Lions Tour.What does rugby mean to Wales? Where does the heart of Welsh rugby lie? In Calon, Owen Sheers takes a personal journey into a sport that defines a nation. Drawing on interviews and unprecedented access with players and WRU coaching staff, Calon presents an intimate portrait of a national team in the very best tradition of literary sports writing.At the 2011 Rugby World Cup a young Welsh side captained by the 22-year-old Sam Warburton, captured the imagination of the rugby-watching world. Exhibiting the grit and brilliance of generations past, an ill-fated semi-final ended in heartbreak. But a fledgling squad playing with the familiarity of brothers had sent out an electrifying message of hope: could this be a third golden generation of Welsh rugby?It was with this question hanging in the air that Owen Sheers took up his position as Writer in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union. Calon is the document of a year spent at the heart of Welsh rugby; the inside story of a 6 Nations campaign that galvanised a nation and ended in Grand Slam success for the third time in 8 years.

Winner of Wales Book of the Year Pink Mist is a verse-drama about three young soldiers from Bristol who are deployed to Afghanistan. School friends still in their teens, Arthur, Hads and Taff each have their own reasons for enlisting. Within a short space of time they return to the women in their lives (a mother, a wife, a girlfriend), all of whom must now share the psychological and physical aftershocks of their service.A work of great dramatic power, documentary integrity and emotional intensity, Pink Mist uses everyday yet heightened speech to excavate the human cost of modern warfare. Drawing upon interviews with soldiers and their families, as well as ancient texts such as the medieval Welsh poem Y Gododdin, it is the first extended lyric narrative to emerge from the devastating conflict in Afghanistan.

Welcome to our war.The Two Worlds of Charlie F. is a soldier's view of service, injury and recovery. Moving from the war in Afghanistan, through the dream world of morphine-induced hallucinations to the physio rooms of Headley Court, the play explores the consequences of injury, both physical and psychological, and its effects on others as the soldiers fight to win their new battle for survival at home.Drawn from the personal experience of the wounded, injured and sick Service personnel involved, Owen Sheers's The Two Worlds of Charlie F. premiered at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in January 2012 and toured nationally that summer. It was revived for an international tour in 2014. 'Powerfully affecting - Gripping. The authenticity of verbatim drama and the saltiness of barracks-room humour with the finesse of something more lyrical.' Telegraph'An evening of rare, raw power.' IndependentA proportion of the writer's royalties from the sale of this script will be donated to the Marefat High School in Kabul, Afghanistan.

After the sudden loss of his wife, Michael Turner moves to London to start again. Living on a quiet street in Hampstead, he develops a close bond with the Nelson family next door: Josh, Samantha and their two young daughters.The friendship at first seems to offer the prospect of healing, but then a devastating event changes all their lives, and Michael finds himself bearing the burden of grief and a terrible secret.

Resistance opens in 1944, as the women of a small Welsh farming community wake one morning to find that their husbands have gone. Soon after that a German patrol arrives in their valley. In his hugely anticipated debut novel, Owen Sheers has produced a beautifully imagined and powerfully moving story of love and loss.

'"For years afterwards the farmers found them - the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades." So run the blunt, grimly beautiful opening lines of the Welsh poet Owen Sheers's elegy for the men, 4,000 of them from the 38th (Welsh) Division, who were killed or wounded in the Battle of Mametz Wood in July 1916. Sheers revisits that chapter of carnage in a stirring, sprawling promenade show. He draws on the writings of two survivors in particular. One is the poet David Jones whose fractured, enervated, modernist response to his war-time experiences, In Parenthesis, was hailed as a "work of genius" by TS Eliot. The other key influence is the writer Llewelyn Wyn Griffith. driven to wondering how the sun "could shine on this mad cruelty and on the quiet peace of an upland tarn near Snowdon"... We end up in dark woods and a place of numb desolation, bombarded by words that pierce the heart and vignettes that capture the stomach-churning sacrifice. The finest commemoration of the First World War centenary I've seen to-date, this deserves a much longer life.' Dominic Cavendish, Daily TelegraphMametz by Owen Sheers was premiered by National Theatre Wales in June 2014. It is one of the set plays on WJEC's A level Drama specification. This dual edition combines the original English-language play with a Welsh-language translation by Ceri Wyn Jones, one of Wales's most eminent poets.

In 1966 a coal slag heap collapsed on a school in south Wales, killing 144 people, most of them children. Poet Owen Sheers has given voice to those who still live in Aberfan, the pit village in which tragedy struck, and uses their collective memories to create a striking work of poetic power.This is a portrait not just of what happened, but also of what was lost. What was Aberfan like in 1966? What were the interests of the people, the social life, the sporting obsessions, the bands of the day? What was the deeper history of the place? Why had it become the mining village it was, and what had it been before the discovery of coal under its soil? Perhaps most significantly: what is Aberfan like today?The Green Hollow is a historical story with a deeply urgent contemporary resonance; a story of what can happen when a community is run by a corporation. It is also a story known along generational rather than geographic borders. Based on the BBC One production, The Green Hollow is a beautifully rendered picture of a time and place - and a life-altering event whose effects are irrevocable.

'Should be made compulsory reading . . . If it were up to me this clear-sighted yet emotionally charged hymn to the NHS would be added to the curriculum in every high school from Land's End to John O'Groats with immediate effect.' i newspaper July 2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service Act. To Provide All People is the intimate story of the NHS in British society today, written by novelist, poet and dramatist Owen Sheers. Depicting 24 hours, with a regional hospital at the centre of the action, the poem charts an emotional and philosophical map of the NHS against the personal experiences that lie at its heart; from patients to surgeons, porters to midwives. This is a world of transformative pains, triumphs, losses and celebrations and joins us all in our universal experiences of health and sickness, birth and death, regardless of race, gender or wealth.Informed by over seventy hours of interviews, the work is punctuated with the historical narrative of the birth of the NHS Act. To Provide All People was filmed by Vox Pictures/BBC Wales.

Unicorns, Almost portrays the short life of World War II poet Keith Douglas, from his childhood through four engagements to his fighting in the Western desert, his accelerated education as a poet and his early death three days after the Normandy D-Day landings at the age of twenty-four. It is the story of his Faustian pact with a war that would nurture his unique poetic voice before taking it away. It is also the story of his desperate race to see his poems in print.Widely recognised as the finest poet of World War Two, Keith Douglas was championed by Ted Hughes as an important influence. Hughes wrote the introduction to Douglas's Collected Poems, published by Faber.Unicorns, Almost by Owen Sheers opened at The Swan Hotel, Hay-on-Wye, in May 2018, and went on to tour in Normandy, Edinburgh and Bristol in Summer 2019.

A meditation on war, memory and the nature of time, Mametz, inspired by the writings of David Jones and Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, tells the story of the 38th Welsh Division's attack on Mametz Wood during the Somme offensive of 1916. Set within the context of a contemporary battlefield tour and moving between the present day, the 1950s and WWI, the play transports an audience into the frontline trenches and the intimate fears, hopes and loves of the young soldiers risked and gave their lives in their attempt to take the wood."The finest commemoration of the First World War centenary I've seen to-date, this deserves a much longer life." Dominic Cavendish, DAILY TELEGRAPH"an astounding exploration - melding narrative and poetry - of the Battle of Mametz Wood" Carolyn Hitt, WESTERN MAIL

A beautiful, lyrical story of a little boy and his two best friends, told in enchanting verse by renowned poet Owen Sheers and magnificently illustrated by award-winning artist Helen Stephens.Poet Owen Sheers and award-winning illustrator Helen Stephens have beautifully imagined the story of a little boy named Drew who sets off on an adventure with his best friends, Bunny and Moo. As the three fly around the world on a magic rug, powered by the friendship they share, they run into pirates and trouble on the dark sea. Can the three best friends find what they need to return home?

A beautiful, lyrical story of a little boy and his two best friends, told in enchanting verse by renowned poet Owen Sheers and magnificently illustrated by award-winning artist Helen Stephens.Poet Owen Sheers and award-winning illustrator Helen Stephens have beautifully imagined the story of a little boy named Drew who sets off on an adventure with his best friends, Bunny and Moo. As the three fly around the world on a magic rug, powered by the friendship they share, they run into pirates and trouble on the dark sea. Can the three best friends find what they need to return home?

This impressive debut includes poems on a wide range of themes: from recollections of a return to Fiji, to sharper memories of an adolescence in a rural town in Wales; from dark ruminations on farm life to tender and unconventional love poems. Owen Sheers has a talent for visual imagery, a flair for narrative and a grasp of the personal as acute as his awareness of the wider world. His astute portraits of relatives and contemporaries entice us into other lives. The Blue Book is a startlingly good first collection by a young writer of considerable ability and promise."This vivid and potent debut collection from Owen Sheers is populated with characters trying to come to terms with themselves and others and with the difficult journeys they find themselves taking. It is a moving experience, which he makes sense of in finely wrought verse that is tough, but also lyrical. A distinctive new voice for the year 2000."Neil Rollinson"Owen Sheers writes controlled, suggestive poems. This is thoughtful work, attentive and responsive to the world, and with a subtle music of its own"Susan Wicks"It is the truth in the details that suggests indisputably that Owen Sheers is the real thing, a poet of promise whom we are sure to hear much of in future. Buy, buy." Dannie Abse"Owen Sheer's poetry is contemporary, yet imbued with a strong, surprising, sense of memory. His characters are not merely vehicles for a poet's perceptions, they live - from Fijian preacher to farm workers and edgy adolescents in rural Wales to the sleeping girl who brings love to the night bus. He has a knack for capturing the cruelty of life's lack of tidy resolution but, best of all, Sheers has the courage to be tender." Francine StockOwen Sheers was born in 1974, spent a portion of his childhood abroad, then returned to live on a farm in Abergavenny when he was nine. Educated at Oxford, with an MA in Creative Writing from the UEA writing programme, he has worked in television in London and Wales. He hit the limelight in 2000 when for The Times of January 1st, 2000, David Bailey photographed the foremost practitioners in the arts and sciences together with their choice of the person they expected to carry the discipline forward: Poet Laureate Andrew Motion selected Owen Sheers as the poet to watch. His first book was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize Best First Collection and ACW Book of the Year 2001. Skirrid Hill, his second collection, won a Somerset Maugham Prize in 2006 and was longlisted for Welsh Book of the Year.

Ideas of separation inhabit many of the poems in Owen Sheers’ second collection: the geographical and linguistic divides of borders, the separation of the living and the dead, the movement from childhood to adulthood, the fraying of relationships. It is in the acute awareness of such moments of separation – past or impending – and in the friction between these two diverse states that Sheers’ penetrating, tender poems are often formed. At once grounded and lyrical, the poems in Skirrid Hill, first published in 2005, reveal the continued growth of a poet gifted with a rare descriptive power and a uniquely sensitive insight into the trials and contours of life.

New Stories from the Mabinogion is an exciting series of contemporary novels by leading authors, reworking ancient Celtic myth cycles.The first two stories are published in October 2009. Authors so far commissioned are Owen Sheers, Niall Griffiths, Russell Celyn Jones and Gwyneth Lewis. The eleven stories in the Mabinogion are diverse medieval Welsh tales taken from two fourteenth-century manuscripts collating a much earlier oral tradition. They were first translated into English in the nineteenth century. They bring us Celtic mythology, a history of the Island of Britain seen through the eyes of medieval Wales, and include the first appearance in literature of King Arthur - but tell tales that stretch way beyond the boundaries of contemporary Wales. There is enchantment and shape-shifting, conflict, peacemaking, love, betrayal. A wife conjured out of flowers is punished for unfaithfulness by being turned into an owl,Arthur and his knights chase a magical wild boar and its piglets from Ireland, across south Wales to Cornwall, a prince changes places with the king of the underworld for a year - Each author has chosen a story to reinvent and retell for their own reasons and in their own way: creating fresh, contemporary tales which speak to us today, while tapping into a vigorous source of stories still flowing just beneath the surface of our culture. White Ravens by Owen Sheers is the first in the series and is based on the tale of Branwen, Daughter of Llyr, one of the most action-packed in the whole myth cycle. This 2009 retelling moves this bloodthirsty tale of Welsh/Irish power struggles and family tensions into the twenty-first century, but retains many of the bizarre and magical happenings of the original.

In The Gospel of Us, Owen Sheers reimagines his National Theatre of Wales dramatisation of the three-day Passion, set in the streets and clubs of Port Talbot. Sheers' novel tells of a town in thrall to the sinister corporation ICU – until the day when a stranger appears in the dunes, singing songs to the sea. This is just the start of three days of unearthly events in Port Talbot: events that see the Teacher soothe a suicide bomber, and the dead rise in an underpass. "Owen is one of the finest writers at work today. He always finds the sublime in the everyday and the miracle in the mundane." – Michael Sheen"Sheers writes with dazzle and poetic economy." – The Times"One of the outstanding theatrical events not only of this year, but of the decade." – The Observer on The Passion of Port TalbotOwen Sheers is the author of the novel Resistance (2008), shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Book Award and now a film starring Michael Sheen and Andrea Riseborough (2011). His other books include two Seren poetry collections, The Blue Book (2000) and Skirrid Hill (2006); a Zimbabwean travel narrative and 2005 Welsh Book of the Year, The Dust Diaries (2005); and White Ravens, his entry in Seren's New Stories from the Mabinogion series of short novels (2010).