Bathing on the Roof

Act-of-God-turned-celebrity diva, Flood likes to make an impression. She wakes up on the wrong side of bed, makes a Severn Bridge of herself, parties with lightning, pouts for the paparazzi and drowns far more than she means to. Explored through the lens of the media and fame, these poems imagine how Mother Nature might respond to humanity’s interference, were she as flawed and determined as humanity itself. The collection also contains a series of poems that reclaim the Biblical Bathsheba as an everywoman of the ages, creating a collage of female experience in all its sensual complexity. Whether finding herself living on the streets, arriving in the Garden of Eden, giving birth, swallowing her tongue or shopping in Beverley Hills, Bathsheba negotiates the edgy boundaries of her relationships with men while navigating the confines of her body.

Tracey Rhys is a Bridgend-based writer, originally from the Rhondda. Her poems, stories and essays have appeared in Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Planet, The Lonely Crowd, Ink, Sweat & Tears, A470, Yer Ower Voices: Dialect Poetry from Wales, Lipstick Eyebrows and more. Listed for various competitions including the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition, Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition and Cardiff International Poetry Competition, her first pamphlet Teaching a Bird to Sing was a judge’s favourite in the Michael Marks Award.