The Working Class Poet

This piece first appeared on Wales Arts Review in May 2018 as part of their series on working class voices in the arts in Wales.   Sophie McKeand’s two-year-tenure as Young People’s Laureate for Wales comes to an end shortly. Here in the latest instalment of the Wales Arts Review series looking at working class voices […]

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What is the Role of the Poet in Society?

This piece first appeared on Wales Arts Review in December 2016. What is the role of a poet in modern society? Sophie McKeand writes about the overwhelming challenge facing artists today: to speak up or stay silent? The Politics of Authenticity I’m writing this at 5.30am on a Friday morning. Later today will involve catching the train to […]

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I Am Taliesin

I’m going to post some pieces written for other publications here over the next few weeks, so that they’re all in one place. I’m going to start with I Am Taliesin, which first appeared on the Dark Mountain blog as part of their ‘The Mythos We Live By’ series.  This week we continue ‘The Mythos We […]

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Together, We Are Giants

I was recently commissioned by the Aneurin Bevan University Hospital to write a poem to celebrate 70 years of our wonderful National Health Service. I’m deeply honoured to be involved with such a project as all of my family have relied on the NHS over the years – some of us wouldn’t be here without […]

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Poetry and the National Trust

Over the last week I’ve been fortunate enough to work with local young people at two National Trust properties: Tredegar House in Newport and Chirk Castle, on the north Wales border. Organised and facilitated by Literature Wales as part of the Young People’s Laureateship, each residency lasted two days and a lot of fun was […]

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Expectation (neu addo a bygwth)

Expectation (neu addo a bygwyth) is one of the political poems from Rebel Sun. The Russian-inspired propaganda artwork by Andy Garside giving the reader the heads-up that left-wing socialist/Marxist/anarchist politics will inform elements of the content. Over a decade ago, when first starting out writing, everything I created was political but after a while I […]

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The Party of Wales

It wasn’t intentional to use The Guardian twice in a row for #postnewspolitics. In their defence it’s because I haven’t posted one in a while and couldn’t bring myself to spend the extra money a Saturday paper costs on anything else. But now I’m here and the pages are open I’m reminded why I’m becoming […]

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Newspaper loyalty

Just a quick #postnewspolitics today. Taken from The Guardian.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the oscillating love/hate I’ve had for The Guardian over the past few years. A decade ago I’d buy it religiously especially on Saturdays (and the Observer on Sundays). I felt a real affinity with the columnists and political writers. What […]

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Post News Politics

Last year I launched a project charting our print newspapers’ response to Brexit. It was a depressing time and after thirty days I was left unable to read a newspaper for weeks. I named it, predictably, #thirtydaysofBrexit. Now that May has called a snap election and the UK is about to go thermonuclear I’m reviving […]

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The Welsh Agenda

This week I was honoured to feature in The Institute for Welsh Affairs, The Next 30 / Wales’ Rising Stars: 30 people working to make Wales better over the next 30 years. I had no idea I had been nominated so it was a complete shock to discover the inclusion recently. Reading through the list, […]

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