Wales Book of the Year Focus – Cowboy

This blog is part of a series spotlighting the books shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Award 2024.

This time, we shine a light on Cowboy by Kandace Siobhan Walker, shortlisted for the Poetry Award.

Cowboy, Kandace Siobhan Walker (Cheerio Publishing)

The poems in Cowboy are knowing, millennial, internet-sick, funny, but there are deeper undercurrents, too: of embodied and disembodied spiritualities; of the knowledge of animals; of familial mythologies; of grief and longing; of autism and navigating diagnoses; of early and enduring disappointment; of the wildness underneath the smooth glass-and-chrome surfaces of contemporary life.

About the Author

Kandace Siobhan Walker, a writer and artist of Jamaican-Canadian, Saltwater Geechee and Welsh heritage, is also the author of Kaleido (Bad Betty Press).  In 2021, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and the winner of The White Review Poet’s Prize. In 2019, she won the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize.

Reviews

Here are a selection of reviews of Cowboy:

Nation Cymru

The Good Literary Agency

The Poetry Society

Buy The Book

Buy Cowboy via the Cheerio website:

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