Circle Meeting Guest Speaker Emily Cotterill

Emily Cotterill is a Cardiff-based poet from Alfreton, Derbyshire. Her debut pamphlet The Day of the Flying Ants was published by smith|doorstop in 2019. The pamphlet was a part of Carol Ann Duffy’s final Laureate’s Choice selection. It has been variously described as, ‘neo-punk’, ‘Northern soul’ and ‘fizzingly acute’.

Her poetry has appeared in a wide range of locations in print and online including Poetry Wales, The North, and The Waxed Lemon.

Emily writes about place, identity, and pop culture. Her debut collection Significant Wow, from Seren Books, is delivered with dry wit, fizzing with humour and inventiveness, with subjects ranging from celebrity culture (Blondie, David Bowie, Michael Sheen) to the class system (“Money in your mouth like an accident”) to reservations about parenthood in ‘A Speculative Script for Motherhood’.

“Emily Cotterill’s poems are built from the things that poetry usually leaves out: the service station slip road, the trailer for Charlie’s Angels, James Dean Bradfield in the vegetable aisle. But in her work, all these things attain a revelatory power, carried aloft on her immense wit and originality.” – Joe Dunthorne

The meeting will take place at 7pm on Wednesday 10 September 2025. Everyone is welcome.

The meeting venue is the Taliesin Arts Centre (downstairs from the main auditorium), Swansea University Singleton Campus, Swansea SA2 8QD. There will also be a zoom link for those who can’t attend in person.

If you would like to join the meeting as a guest, please Contact the Secretary.