Gwyneth Lewis in conversation with clare e. potter - Cardiff

Join us as we welcome Gwyneth Lewis, the inaugural National Poet of Wales and one of the UK's leading poets, to the store to discuss her haunting, profoundly moving memoir Nightshade Mother. Gwyneth will be in conversation with fellow poet clare e. potter.
Gwyneth Lewis kept the story of her painful upbringing to herself – until now. Finally, in her memoir Nightshade Mother, she writes of the pain she suffered at the hands of her controlling, coercive mother. It is a book that Gwyneth has been preparing to write all her life, in diaries which she’s kept since childhood. In these journals, she interrogates the mother/daughter relationship, in great pain but determined to find a way through.
The result is a memoir which Gwyneth co-writes with her younger self, an unexpected and life-saving dialogue through time. Metaphors of haunting intensity help her confront what happened to her; quotations from art and literature guide and steady her. Profoundly moving, questing and loving in its approach, Nightshade Mother is a book for anyone who has suffered at the hands of a coercive parent.

Gwyneth Lewis is one of the UK’s most acclaimed writers. She was brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff, studied English and spent time in America. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her other non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage. Her tenth book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is forthcoming in March 2025. Gwyneth was awarded an MBE in 2023 for services to literature and mental health.

Refreshments will be provided! Please note that our events space is on the first floor, accessible via stairs or lift. Do contact us if you have any access requirements.
Doors open at 18:30

Host or Publisher Waterstones