The Mabinogi is the Welsh national epic, a collection of prose tales of war and enchantment, adventure and romance, which have long fascinated readers all over the world. A baby is kidnapped by a monstrous claw, a giant wades across the Irish Sea to do battle, a wizard makes a woman out of flowers, only to find she is less biddable than he expected. Read an extract from my 2017 Faber and Faber poetic retelling of The Mabinogi here. 

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Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and the Wales Book of the Year Award.

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"I have waited a life for this book ... This is more than translation. It picks up the harp and sings."

(Gillian Clarke)

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" An extraordinary new rendering in the shape of four long poems that ruminate over the narrative detail, both compressing the stories and allowing their imagery to unfold and flower...full of unexpected verbal triumphs." (Rowan Williams, Literary Review)

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"Brilliant ... Ted Hughes meets Game of Thrones meets Gerard Manley Hopkins ... a wonderful precision of language." (William Boyd,New Statesman Books of the Year)

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"Imagery that unsprings the magic of the old Welsh tales ... a wonder." (Paul Griffiths, TLS Books of the Year)

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"Radical and beautifully economical ... Strikingly original ... The real thing." (Craig Raine, TLS Books of the Year)

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"Blazes with fresh and exciting strangeness." (Marina Warner, TLS Books of the Year)

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"A modern epic of voice and storytelling... There is magic, trickery and wonder ahead. "( Samuel Graydon, TLS)

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"Vividly realist, and then smoothly dreamy, a shapeshifting introduction to and renewal of the Welsh national epic." (John McAuliffe, The Irish Times)

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" Full of suspense but leavened with characteristically playful touches, these absorbing and atmospheric poetic narratives will enchant and move the reader." (Wales Literature Exchange)

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"Sheer delight. Francis’s writing is buoyant, precise, swift-moving and easy to absorb, but full of unobtrusive subtlety, so that ease of reading is combined with richness of effect." Edmund Prestwich, The North

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"His version feels live, fresh, new ... he writes of serious matters, but he does it with humour and a constant delight in the variety and wonder of the world." (Sheenagh Pugh)

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"Like swimming through chocolate - just delicious!" Casia Wiliam, Welsh Children's Laureate)

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"Francis revels in language and holds us transfixed by the spells it casts ... a stunningly inventive transformation of The Mabinogi that will surely become a classic in its own right." Jenny Lewis, The Poetry Review

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