Author: Sam Smith

Sam Smith is editor of The Journal (once 'of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry'), and publisher of Original Plus books. He has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator........ working at anything, in fact, which paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters and which didn’t get too much in the way of his writing. Now in his 70s he has ended up living in South Wales. He has several poetry collections and novels to his name. For the past couple of years he has been campaigning for Wales to have its own Poetry Library.

Q and A with Sam Smith – Author Interview

Sam Smith is an author, poet and editor-proofreader, based in Wales. He has written many books, and his poetry collections include Rooms and Problems and Polemics. When did you realise you wanted to become an author? Way back in the sixties when I was living in London, but I actually decided to take the plunge […]

Identity in Mental Health by Sam Smith

identity in mental health sam smith

Identity is often based on no more than self-image, and self-image on what we think we’d like to be like, a compound of made-up mirror image, family likenesses and fantasy film roles. In this respect the young are often so deluded. It was once my task to give work-experience schoolchildren guided tours around the old […]

Poetry Types: Forms of Poetry by Sam Smith

Types of poetry

What is an editor to do? Poetry is in a state of flux, is at a similar stage to that of early cubism — clumsy, ugly, monochrome structures built on theory…. no song, no beauty, too reliant on the appreciation of a partisan cognoscenti…. And that’s just those few attempting the new. Other poets labour […]

The Poetry Library of Wales. Not. by Sam Smith

national poetry library

Where is the Poetry Library of Wales?This was a question I asked on Radio Cardiff last year. Answer at the moment has to be – nowhere. Wales, home of the Eisteddfod bards, does not have its own poetry library. England has its own Poetry Library – on London’s South bank. For hands-on research it’s open […]