Gwyneth Lewis

Until now, poet Gwyneth Lewis has kept the story of her painful upbringing at the hands of a coercive and controlling mother to herself.

In her memoir Nightshade Mother, the inaugural National Poet of Wales shares her story through revisiting her childhood diaries and looking back on her younger years.

Nightshade Mother is a book about the power of art and language, and a moving and questing look at parents and children.

One of the UK’s most acclaimed writers, Lewis was brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and  Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage. Her 10th book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is out in March 2025. In 2023, Lewis was made an MBE for services to literature and mental health.