New Voices First Pamphlet Award winner 2022
Bethan Manley‘s first collection, Goodnight Cariad was published as a pamphlet by Frosted Fire in October 2022. As an award winner, Bethan received 50 free copies of her book, and royalties on all books sold after that.
Following a wildfire words/Frosted Fire tradition, Bethan was invited to act as a triage judge for the New Voices 2023 competition, reading entries and considering them for a longlist of potential winners.
Bethan Manley was born in 1999 and studied an MA in Critical and Creative Writing, achieving a distinction, at the University of Gloucestershire. Her poetry has appeared in The Phare, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Snakeskin.
If you would like a copy of this remarkable book, you can order it here.
Endorsements of Goodnight Cariad
This collection is created from voices. Voices that were silenced when slurry from a colliery waste tip slid into Aberfan, combined with voices that are still calling out in grief, guilt and anger. These are poems of compassionate imagination, like the testimony of the slip itself, and memories in another language, also left behind as the world has moved on. It begins at a moment frozen in history and reaches out over half a century to speak its truth in a changed society. Ann Drysdale
Bethan Manley shows us the tragedy, grief, and guilt of the Aberfan disaster through this sequence of finely crafted poems. She employs different voices with sensitivity and compassion, each poem pared back to language which is attentive and sometimes devastating. Her imagery, and space as silence, creates for this reader an understanding of a community forever crippled by loss while her careful use of Welsh shows us the language fading with, perhaps, our memories of something that should not be forgotten. Angela France
Five sample poems from Goodnight Cariad are below, each with an audio recording of Bethan reading it.
Poems from Goodnight Cariad
I.
stone houses stand
shoulder
to shoulder
no white picket fences
children play outside
the streetlights a sign
it’s time to go home
where tea will be waiting
for them on the table
father’s fingernails painted
with coal he coughs
wiping black sputum
with his dusty handkerchief
his son copies his heaves
I’m going to be just like you
when the sun sets
behind the jagged mountains
and heaps of slurry
the village sleeps with it
V.
the village held its breath
each time the whistle blew
people crowded round
to see if the child pulled
from the rubble
was their own
ydyn nhw’n anadlu?
tawelwch
they listened for voices
a sign of life
unconscious children
passed down a chain gang
it blew again
they returned to the rescue
the shrill of the whistle still haunts
the school’s skeleton
wraps around each bone
harmonising with the wind
footnote: ydyn nhw’n anadlu? – are they breathing?
tawelwch – silence
VII.
the man with the grey eyes
bloodshot from tears
and grains of slurry
tells rescuers to treat the kids
like planks of wood
the dead ones
do not get attached
miners are warned
there will be bodies
casualties deaths disasters
nobody expects they will be children
talk to them
don’t let the parents know
children like ragdolls sleep
in the arms of their rescuers
blonde ponytails
remind them of their daughter’s
thankful they are safe at home
they carry children
to the mortuary
past prying eyes of parents
with bated breath
unsure if it’s their turn to mourn
for their child
or their neighbour’s
XVI.
he has calloused hands
unforgiving
of the days spent digging
up children
deep wrinkles overflow
with coal dust his age a secret
his hands have forgotten
hands that once held his daughter’s
now carry her to her grave
shake with the weight
of grief broken
fingernails beg for her back
clutch the earth
she is lowered into
XXII.
‘exactly how close were you to your children?’
my life is divided
into before and after
I still make them breakfast
call for them to come and eat
wait for groans of protest
say they should’ve gone to bed
earlier before I wipe the sleep
from their eyes hurry
them downstairs
too afraid of being late for school
to cradle this moment
my breath catches in my throat
a loss unfolds moment
by moment
I long for the feel of their skin
roseate plump cheeks
I once crafted
chilled from the bite of October
the curves of their faces
fit in my hands
as though I gave my womb
measurements
I long to return your compensation
see the light seep
under the door frame
when they stayed up past bedtime
reading afraid of getting caught
the book is still under
the pillow