Nia Davies readings
‘In a collection that straddles buoyancy and hesitancy, Davies courts the pleasures, mishaps and undersides of languages. Welsh, English, action, gesture, food, land, bodies, water and desire become itinerant strata in a terpsichorean poetics of intimacy. Polyphonic jouissance.’ – Amy McCauley on Votive Mess
Nia Davies' second collection Votive Mess, published in October 2024, asks how time and desire move us errantly. It follows her startling debut All fours, emerging from an immersion in performance and ritual. The poems trace a path through the peaks and troughs of performance, bouncing between enchantment and disenchantment. These works are studies in the altered states of travel, masks, comedy, learning and love. Nia Davies begins to learn a lost mother tongue, y iaith Gymraeg, and presents unfinished experiments in liminality.
Nia Davies is a poet experimenting with performance, embodied practice, intermedia and hybrid writing. She is also a writer, researcher, performer and literary curator. She was editor of Poetry Wales from 2014 to 2019, and has worked on several international and collaborative projects such as Literature Across Frontiers, Wales International Poetry Festival and Wales Literature Exchange. Her pamphlets, Then Spree (Salt, 2012), Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız or Long Words (Boiled String, 2016) and England (Crater, 2017), were followed by her first book-length collection, All fours (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award 2018 (Wales Book of the Year Awards) and longlisted for the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize for a distinctive first book of poetry. She was recently awarded a doctorate for research into poetry and ritual at the University of Salford. She lives in Swansea.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Monday 21 October, 7pm
Bloodaxe online launch reading by Dzifa Benson, Nia Davies and Helen Ivory
Join Bloodaxe for this free launch reading by Dzifa Benson, Nia Davies and Helen Ivory, celebrating the publication of our new October titles. All three poets will be reading live and discussing their work with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Register for the event via TicketTailor here: https://buytickets.at/bloodaxebooks/1382317.
Thursday 24 October, 7.30pm
Votive Mess: Launch party
Elysium Bar, 210 High Street, Swansea/Abertawe, SA1 1PE
A publication day book launch party for Nia Davies's new poetry collection, Votive Mess, with special guests Truly Kaput and the Midnight Tremblers & friends.
Details on the Facebook event page here.
Wednesday 30 October, 1pm
Talk for the Creative & Critical Practice Research Group, Swansea University
Singleton Campus, Swansea University/Prifysgol Abertawe KH303
More details here.
Saturday 2 November, 11am
Performance at Gŵyl Nawr Festival
Tŷ Tawe, 9 Christina Street, Swansea/Abertawe, SA1 4EW
Nia will be performing at this multidisciplinary concert series in Swansea.
Tickets - £20. More details here.
PAST EVENTS
Nia Davies reads from All fours at Ledbury
Nia Davies reads and introduces ten poems from her Bloodaxe debut collection, All fours (2017), at Ledbury Poetry Festival on 1st July 2018, when she shared the stage in the town’s Burgage Hall with Caroline Bird. The poems she reads are: ‘About me’, ‘With Sinbad’; two poems about Orpheus, ‘I know descent lives in the word decent’ and ‘& blow in the god’s good wake to leave my only pounded dust’; ‘Mossy Coat’, ‘Poem with sex’, ‘A word in your shell-like’, ‘It is not sufficient to be waiting like this’, ‘the mediums of vikor ullmann’, and ‘Hello Beautiful’.
[09 October 2024]
