Simone Mansell Broome who is better known to Welsh Country readers as owner of The Ceridwen Centre the venue for so many events as well as green accommodation. Well getting off lightly has not been Simone’s motto during lockdown as this poetry book proves.
Simone Mansell Broome tells Welsh Country a little of her background.
“I have lived, since 2007, on a small farm in West Wales, where I jointly run a thriving family business with sustainability and community values at its core. It operates as a centre for ‘alternative’ weddings, for holidays – especially glamping holidays, for a variety of workshops and courses and as a ‘pop-up restaurant’. ‘Thriving’ of course doesn’t really apply right now – as we’ve been ‘locked down’ for most of the last year!
I studied English with American Studies at Sussex University, qualified both as a teacher of Speech and Drama and of EFL and taught privately, and at secondary and further education levels. After leaving teaching, I worked in business, but my twin passions have always been the written and the spoken word. Page and stage!
Over the last sixteen years, I’ve rediscovered my love of writing – chairing a local writers’ group, being a member of two others, co-hosting a monthly spoken word night, Word Up, in Cardigan, reading my work aloud at venues and festivals in England, Wales and Ireland, taking part in poetry slams and dramatic performances, winning & being placed in a number of poetry competitions and representing Wales in a Radio 4 spoken word competition in 2010.
I’ve been recorded on Poetcasting and my poems have been read on BBC’s ‘Poetry Please’, ITV (in 2018 & 2020), 101.8WCRFM and Radio Wales. I’m a member of Second Light network & have poems on the ‘poetrypf’ website. Fifty of my poems were translated into Romanian in 2020 as part of a Bucharest University M.A. dissertation. I’ve been commissioned to write poems by ITV and by a local theatre group. I wrote a blog during lockdown, which formed the basis of ‘A Year of Going Nowhere’. I’m currently editing my first children’s book, about a clan of mice called the Stowaways.
Simone Mansell Broome ‘s Getting Off Lightly is a collection of 17 poems created between 2006 and 2021 by West Wales writer Simone Mansell Broome. All are meant to be read aloud and all of them have been. Two have been published in Simone’s earlier books. Several of these are competition poems, performed in slams and/or recorded or broadcast.
Humour is a thread linking many of them, but not all of the poems are lightweight. Darker themes and more serious concerns are in there too.
Getting Off Lightly can be purchased as a ebook from for $2.99. Published 31st March, 2021
