The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is delighted to host the launch of Gwyneth Lewis’ much-anticipated memoir, Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling (University of Wales Press/Calon). Join us for an intimate talk and reading by Gwyneth Lewis, the inaugural National Poet of Wales and one of the UK’s leading poets.

Gwyneth Lewis kept the story of her painful upbringing to herself – until now. Finally, in her memoir Nightshade Mother, she writes of the pain she suffered at the hands of her controlling, coercive mother. It is a book that Gwyneth has been preparing to write all her life, in diaries which she’s kept since childhood. In these journals, she interrogates the mother/daughter relationship, in great pain but determined to find a way through.

The result is a memoir that Gwyneth co-writes with her younger self, an unexpected and life-saving dialogue through time. Metaphors of haunting intensity help her confront what happened to her; quotations from art and literature guide and steady her. Nightshade Mother is a book about the power of art, about language, and about homecoming, after a lifetime of exile from herself. Profoundly moving, questing and loving in its approach, Nightshade Mother is a book for anyone who has suffered at the hands of a coercive parent.

After the reading, join us for a complimentary wine reception and purchase a copy of Nightshade Mother from the Caper (@caperoxford) pop-up bookshop.

Gwyneth Lewis is one of the UK’s most acclaimed writers. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her other non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and  Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage. Her tenth book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is forthcoming in March 2025. Gwyneth was awarded an MBE in 2023 for services to literature and mental health.

This event is free and open to all.

Registration is advised.