Matthew M. C. Smith : part one

Matthew M. C. Smith is a writer from Swansea, Wales. He writes about landscape, the passage of time, spirit of place, memory and cosmos. Matthew’s work can be seen in Poetry Wales, Barren Magazine, Finished Creatures, The Storms, Anti-Heroin Chic, Seventh Quarry Press, Fevers of the Mind, Icefloe Press and The Lonely Crowd. He is also the editor of Black Bough Poetry and poetry fest on Twitter @TopTweetTuesday.

Matthew runs, hikes, attempts to locate caves and burial mounds, collects vintage Star Wars and messes about with his kids. He has published Origin: 21 Poems is close to finishing The Keeper of Aeons, with Broken Spine Arts.

What are you working on?

I’m working on my second collection of poetry, after ‘Origin: 21 Poems’ in 2018. It’s heading for five years since I self-published my first work and I have a publishing house for my second, Broken Spine Arts. The book is called ‘The Keeper of Aeons’ and it deals with deep time and points in history; it delves into landscape and the spirit of place, culminating in journeys outwards to the cosmos. We travel from a shamanistic experience in Ice Age Gower to floating in the Space Station and gazing back at Earth. It might be out this autumn. 

I’m also editing forthcoming anthologies with my poetry press, Black Bough poetry. There are several volumes coming out, guest-edited by Briony Collins and Jen Feroze, respectively, and I oversee the projects, as well as the Dai Fry Award for Mystical Poetry anthology, which is also in the pipeline…and a Christmas edition! I also run TopTweetTuesday, a weekly poetry fest on Twitter where poets from across the world share short, imagist poems, conducted by a guest host. I have a lot of plans for future project and have to remember to pace them out as it’s a hobby.