Rhys Owain Williams
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rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Rhys Owain Williams
@rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
610 followers 1K following 150 posts
Writer of poetry, fiction and other things | That Lone Ship (Parthian Books) | Hay Festival Writer At Work | He/Him | https://linktr.ee/rhysowainwilliams
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rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Hoping to be able to share some exciting book news in the New Year. Until then I’m still flogging the first collection, and I’ve also added this brand new digital art print featuring the title poem (made by me, no AI) to my Ko-fi shop. UK & international postage available. ko-fi.com/rhysowainwil...
A framed print stands against a concrete wall. The print shows a stylised seascape with a dark blue sky, a white band of cloud and rippling blue water. On the horizon is a simple blue silhouette of a ship. Text in the sky reads: ‘That lone ship on the horizon / arriving or leaving?‘ The book That Lone Ship by Rhys Owain Williams leans against the frame, featuring a dark cover with a blue title and a white ship.
November 18, 2025 at 4:53 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Best stairwell in Wales (if there is such a thing)
Stairwell with beige tiled walls featuring vertical blue and brown stripes. A wooden handrail with black metal supports runs along the stairs, which are covered in light gray flooring with black stair edges. Stairwell with beige tiled walls featuring vertical blue and brown stripes. A wooden handrail with black metal supports runs along the stairs, which are covered in light gray flooring with black stair edges. Stairwell with beige tiled walls featuring vertical blue and brown stripes. A wooden handrail with black metal supports runs along the stairs, which are covered in light gray flooring with black stair edges.
August 30, 2025 at 9:55 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
I’ve got a poem in the new issue of @gutter.bsky.social, available to buy at guttermag.co.uk/getgutter/p/gutter-32. ‘The First Law of Thermodynamics’ is written in memory of my stepdad, who died in March 2020 a week before the first lockdown. Can’t believe over 5 years have now passed.
Hand holding a copy of Gutter magazine, Issur 32. The cover is red with bold vertical strokes of red, orange and yellow paint in the centre. The title ‘Gutter’ is printed in large yellow text at the top, with the subtitle ‘New Scottish and international writing’ beneath. A close-up photograph of an open magazine showing a poem titled ‘The First Law of Thermodynamics’ by Rhys Owain Williams, with the subtitle ‘i.m. my stepfather.’ The page number 44 is visible in the top left corner, and ‘Gutter 32’ in the top right. The poem is cut off, but the visible text reads: The week before the world closed down, I lit a candle in the Hallgrímskirkja not yet knowing you had gone. The coin dropped in the church’s box a ritual copied from my mother, who lights them to remember her own. Though I don’t believe in divine light, within a house of prayer’s quiet pause I light a candle for her too: the grandmother that Alzheimer's made sure I barely knew. A woman certain in her faith—white-haired pilgrim to Golgotha’s skull, the empty tomb. But the candle lit on that icy Reykjavík afternoon now belongs to you.
August 20, 2025 at 5:53 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Bit late posting about this but was so happy to have a new poem published in the latest issue of @poetrywales.bsky.social – a special edition feat 60 new Welsh poets to celebrate the magazine’s 60th anniversary. Diolch to @zoebrigley.bsky.social for choosing it and here’s to the next 60 years of PW!
A hand holds up the Spring 2025 issue of Poetry Wales magazine against a backdrop of lush green foliage. The magazine cover is green and black, featuring the headline ‘60 New Welsh Poets for 60 Years of Poetry Wales: from Abeer Ameer to Zillah Bowes.’ The bottom half of the cover is a collage of past Poetry Wales covers, showcasing a variety of designs, colours and styles over the years.
July 1, 2025 at 6:54 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Signed in to LinkedIn for the first time in over 2 years. It's always been full of nonsense, but I see they're now making up geographical areas on there too.
A screenshot of my LinkedIn profile header: Rhys Owain Williams, a 'Writer, Editor, and Proofreader' based in the 'Greater Swansea Area'. Profile picture shows me wearing a red and black checkered shirt, standing in front of a rustic metal background. Pronouns listed are He/Him. The profile includes 102 connections, a 'Contact info' link, and affiliations with The Crunch and Swansea University. A button for adding a verification badge is visible.
June 10, 2025 at 1:22 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Can't believe it's been 20 years since the last game at @swansofficial.bsky.social's Vetch Field, a 2–1 win that saw us raise the FAW Premier Cup. Here's a poem I wrote about that final final-whistle, originally published in 'That Lone Ship' (available from @parthianbooks.bsky.social). #UppaJacks
Vetch Field Elegy Swansea City vs. Wrexham, FAW Premier Cup Final, Swansea, Wales, 11th May 2005 On your deathbed we stripped you. Ripped out red plastic seats and advertisement boards like thieves stealing gold from fresh bodies. The Vetch clock, not yet stopped but definitely slowing, tick-tocked our final minutes away as Roger Evans, muffled by soot, whispered down chimneys into Sandfields living-rooms for the last time. Then, with makeshift spades we dug shallow graves across your boot-worn pitch. Taking turf home to place on the mantel, to plant in back-gardens, to say we were there when that man in black sounded the final final-whistle at our beloved tin shed. And as the smell of warm piss and fried onions drifted above the floodlights, getting lost on its way to the bay, we poured out into the streets like black and white tears. – Rhys Owain Williams rhysowainwilliams.com First published in That Lone Ship A large crowd of passionate Swansea City football fans, dressed mostly in white jerseys, cheer and raise their arms in unison under the roof of a packed stadium terrace, with a football visible in mid-air above them.
May 11, 2025 at 8:19 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Happy Publication Day to @darrenchetty.bsky.social for #ImGoingToMakeAFriend – a book that’s quickly become a favourite in our house!
Three wooden wall-mounted bookshelves display colorful children's books and plush toys. The middle shelf prominently features the book 'I'm Going to Make a Friend' by Darren Chetty and Sandhya Prabhat, flanked by a crocheted giraffe toy. A panda plush toy is on the lower shelf beside books including 'Maps' and 'Meet the Dinosaurs'. The top shelf holds additional books and a Bluey stuffed toy.
May 1, 2025 at 9:24 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
I think about this line from Great Expectations pretty much every day throughout March
A copy of ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens open on Chapter 15. The highlighted line is ‘It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.’
March 14, 2025 at 12:49 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! In honour of St. David's Day, here's a short poem of mine from 'That Lone Ship' (@parthianbooks.bsky.social, 2018)
SCHOOL EISTEDDFOD For ‘Sospan Fach’ I sang too fast he says placing me joint-third one from last although only four of us competed. – Rhys Owain Williams
March 1, 2025 at 5:07 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
I’ve got two new poems in the latest issue of nawr magazine on the theme of ‘deffro/awaken’. Diolch to the editors for publishing them! You can pick up a copy of the issue from nawrmag.bigcartel.com
My hand holding up a copy of the issue of nawr magazine. There’s an illustration on the cover of someone lying down on a bed clothed but with their lower back exposed.
February 17, 2025 at 12:41 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
I am a night owl forever training myself to be a lark
A photograph of a sunrise over Swansea Bay taken from a back lane high above the bay, with terraced houses, trees and telegraph poles silhouetted in the foreground
February 5, 2025 at 7:44 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
It’s #OCDAwarenessWeek. Here’s a poem I wrote after being diagnosed with OCD a couple of years ago, originally published in Field’s issue on the theme of ‘control’.
Here's What Happens When You Enter a Black Hole. Of all the ways I’m afraid to die, falling into a black hole has become less of a concern in adulthood. I no longer fear the great void will open up at the end of my childhood street, a suburban supernova at the turn to Enfield Close. Instead, now I worry about cardiovascular disease, bomb plots, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is my uneven skull harbouring brain tumours? The doctor says No. The night before another birthday, I find a cluster of grey hairs in my beard. My body still surprises me. Last week, it brought a deep splinter to the surface of my finger, presented it from the wound like a gift. Quietus enveloping his deathbed, the post-Christian poet Wallace Stevens sought Catholicism’s comforting embrace. Empty space will do that to you. For years after he died, my grandmother still played my grandfather’s lottery numbers. Now, each year, I retrace her Good Friday pilgrimage to the chip shop for battered cod. Bring her back too. But the dead people I know are far quieter than I’d like them to be. When the landing light pings on in the middle of the night, I know it’s just a malfunction in the switch. Once you reach a certain age, the appearance of a black hole above your house seems less likely. Still, one minute you can be taking washing down from the line, that mix of sun-dried polyester and fabric softener, and all of a sudden your stepfather has died all over again. I used to think the best way to control intrusive thoughts was to think them to death, follow each to their illogical conclusion. Now I try to let them pass by like trains in the night. Alight as soon as possible if one picks me up off-guard. But my mind is quite amusing really. Constantly ruminating upon death. Collecting its little trinkets without my permission. Would you laugh if I told you that Google Earth makes me anxious? That whole 3D world without people where you can plunge to the depths south of Newfoundland to see CGI rusticles hang from The Titanic’s hull. The News says that one treasure of the thawing permafrost is a mammoth bone. A petrified gift from those who roamed what were then Arctic grasslands. Just north, now, of Moscow’s pale moth flitting above the nuclear button’s flame. Of all the ways I’m afraid to die, falling into a black hole has become more of a concern in adulthood. External forces stretching me thinner than paper. The mirage of control disappearing, my narrative unravels. And just beyond the event horizon, each time seeming a little more ajar: the universe’s exit door. www.rhysowainwilliams.com. First published in Field #18.
October 18, 2024 at 1:20 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Never thought I’d be 6 years+ between books, but hopefully not too long until I get the next one finished. You can still pick up That Lone Ship from the Parthian website or anywhere that sells books. www.parthianbooks.com/products/that-lone-ship
Stacks of That Lone Ship at the launch event. The cover has a white silhouetted ship on a black sea with the title of the book above it and my name below it.
September 14, 2024 at 4:43 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Reminded on Instagram that the hometown launch of my first book was 6 years ago today. Great night in the TechHub Cafe in Swansea and had this lovely write up on the Parthian blog the next day: parthianbooksinternblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/the-launch-of-that-lone-ship-by-rhys-owain-williams
Me reading from That Lone Ship to a crowd at TechHub Cafe in Swansea in September 2018. I am on a stage with a microphone and still have hair on my head.
September 14, 2024 at 4:38 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Covered walkways & bridges leading to units either too big or too small, & that weird half-hidden piss-stained climb to an S4C studio. Took these photos of St. David’s back in 2021 when work began on the new Arena-adjacent square – I’m guessing we will eventually lose all traces.
The tired red-brick multi-storey car park at the edge of St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea. The sign says ‘St. David’s Shoppers Car Park’. The closed-down Cranes music shop in the red-brick open-air St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea. Signs in the window say ‘Closing Down Sale, Everything Must Go’ and ‘Final Reductions’. A closed-down shop in the red-brick open-air St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea. The sign says ‘Closing Down Sale’. A covered walkway in the red-brick open-air St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea.
May 11, 2024 at 10:04 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Always been quite fond of St. David’s myself, even though growing up in the 1990s/2000s I only ever remember it being a bit of a ghost town on the edge of the city centre. Like Parc Tawe, it’s a 1980s pre-Internet vision of what shopping should look like in the 21st century.
One of the entrances to the red-brick open-air St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea. The second ‘s’ is missing from the sign that says ‘St. David’s’ above the entrance. A closed-down shop in the red-brick open-air St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea. The sign says ‘Mane Attraction’. A covered walkway in the red-brick open-air St. David’s Shopping Centre in Swansea.
May 11, 2024 at 9:43 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
One for the Swansea ’eds: is this logo for the slowly-disappearing St. David’s Shopping Centre by the same artist as the much-loved Penscynor Wildlife Park car sticker, or is it just of the same time? Have only just clocked the similarities.
A stylised depiction of St. David on the sign for the St. David’s Shopping Centre car park in Swansea
May 11, 2024 at 9:36 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
A poem for #EarthDay2024 on this year’s theme of #PlanetVsPlastics, originally published in Magma’s ‘Poems for Schools’ issue.

Plastic pollution is a global problem demanding a global solution – sign the Global Plastics Treaty today: action.earthday.org/global-plast...
SWANSEA CLINGS TO THE EDGE It takes four hundred and fifty years for a plastic bottle to completely dis inte gra te in the sea. How long for a city? – Rhys Owain Williams
April 22, 2024 at 12:43 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Still can’t quite believe the tragic and unexpected news that Christopher Cornwell has passed away. Chris was such a warm-hearted and generous person – a champion of other writers and a wonderful poet who loved to test the boundaries of form in his constellation-like poems. RIP Chris x
Christopher Cornwell stands in front of the ornate doors of Swansea’s Guildhall. He has long dark hair and a beard and is writing on a piece of paper. A poem from Christopher Cornwell’s collection ‘ergasy’. The text reads: SA20DNCB250BE Brynmill/Burwell - for lan Kalinowski In Swansea, the seagulls rest like grudges on ridges cl filament solder scar fuse last rim of light fusing : a rivulet of milk in a crease of leather. The Methodist church huddles the hunch like grandmother washing lettuce, unaware of being watched, the arcs of mews barnacle its shoulder pulled by, fuelled by, the fuel: the strong-smelling lost for things,
April 4, 2024 at 8:02 AM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! Spending this St. Dai’s Day listening to Angharad’s brilliant debut ‘Motherland’. An album that takes a trip across genres – from disco-infused pop to fireside folk, spoken-word jazzscapes to foot tapping funk. Check it out on Spotify, Bandcamp, etc.
A vinyl record propped up against a vase of daffodils on a table in a blue room. The cover says ‘Angharad Motherland’ and has a photograph of Angharad beneath the writing.
March 1, 2024 at 7:30 PM
rhysowainwilliams.bsky.social
I’ve got poems included in two new anthologies that are both now available to pre-order, if you fancy buying a gift for your future self.
January 18, 2024 at 2:12 PM