As a land known for its poets and bards, Wales has often produced hidden gems of literature waiting to be discovered. (un)common is one of these. As the title reveals, this is an anthology of new Welsh writing, and the writing within is interesting, varied, often funny and always edgy. There is something for everyone's palate, no matter your tastes. Highlights for me: Simone Greenwood's irreverent, Dahl-esque fairytale - "Danny In The Dragon's Den"; "Nervosa" by Ciaran Keys, which I can imagine as an Alan Bennett monologue; and the poetry that punctuates this anthology, sometimes like little bursts of sunshine or other times as stinging hail. Highly recommended if you enjoy delving into new and exciting writing.

I’m a sucker for anthologies. So many ideas bouncing about. Always something unexpected round the corner. (un)common gathers together work from 12 writers who were part of Literature Wales’s development program for underrepresented writers. It’s a hugely enjoyable showcase of their talents. •Kittie Belltree writes an elegy in three parts. The language is spare, the images gleam, the shadows cut like a knife: “my childhood a needle in a mud storm”. The final part is a piece of patterned brilliance which has the phrases interacting with each other to create a feast of delicious intricacy. •Anthony Shapland describes a relationship between a child and a signwriter, two characters full of vulnerability and strength. There is such gentle beauty to the tale. It’s a deceptively easy read, touched here and there with Welsh, each sentence reverberating with meaning: “In an exchange of money and language Sunnymede overpaints Gwynfa”. •In ‘Tower Block Rapunzel’, Rosy Adams tells of a child locked in a tower block flat each day as her adoptive mother goes to work. The story is structured as notes for a story. “The crows bring her gifts: pennies, pebbles, pieces of glass, a single silver earring.” The format works so well; its distancing effect leaving the reader to provide the emotion. The sheer competency of the writing is a joy. •Frankie Parris’s poems here are about a life on the verge of collapse. I love the lightness and humour of the work: “fingers gripping cream bed sheets to feel something on / the skin that isn’t disdain.” Although there’s a sense of failure throughout, there’s also a refusal to give into despair: “I sip from your glass when you’re out of the room, / Did you know that?” •Jon Doyle’s ‘The Man in the Living Room’ is a tale full of farce and angst. There’s a man in Richard’s living room. He’s indistinct and well-sourced: he understands about chemicals “because he’d read papers on them. Classified documents from the military folks at Porton Down.” Richard follows the man’s advice and with ruthless efficiency, his life collapses into chaos. Very funny. •‘Nervosa’ by Ciaran Keys is unexpected. Instability, imbalance, movement. A night journey on the train to Rhyl with mates becomes contemplation on the beach with whisky and a joint. A comprehensive survey of the country’s socio-economic development follows. De-toxing. Years passing. “Another escapee from the box arrives and hits my life like a burning blessed comet.” In the end, it’s a weird tale of hope. •In ‘Darkness Brighter than the Sun’ by Amy Kitcher, a grandchild remembers being rescued from darkness and demons by their grandad. It may be my favourite story in the whole anthology. It’s so easy to slip into cliché when writing about love but the writing here is fresh and vivid. “Silence arrived that day, took up residence, filled every crevice it could find.” •‘The Changing Room’ by Bridget Keehan has a flavour of ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ to it with 15-year-old Aisling in the George Clooney role. The mechanics of nicking a shirt and jeans from Chelsea Girl are deftly told but it’s the bigger picture that matters. Life now offers options. To stick with the respectability yearned for by Mam. Or follow Dad along the path of crookery. Decisions, decisions… Lovely stuff. •I love ‘Into the Blackwood: character sketches from the Valleys’ by Simone Greenwood. Here are Mandy, Mike, Mr Jones and Ceri. “Keeps a lipstick in the pocket of her tabard.” “Look, I grew up cold and hungry”. “A sunny smile and a wave”. “Pink-slippered feet on the pavement”. Like the best sketches, they’re incomplete. They draw you in and leave you, the reader, with work to do. Such fun. •Ben Huxley’s ‘Winter Wynn Gardens’ is intriguing. With a small community park as his canvas, he paints a picture of the scrabbled individuals who visit it over the course of a day. The park is an all-too-brief resting place in the wilderness for troubled souls before they drift back into the confusion of their lives. Beautifully written. •Anastacia Ackers turns to Welsh myth for her story, ‘Blodeuwedd on the 28’. Every day, our heroine travels on the 28 bus from Yr Wyddgrug to Llay and silent passion flows between her and the driver, Gwen. But when the magician Math becomes a regular on the bus, Blodeuwedd’s future is claimed by fate. We’re not told who the narrator of the tale is, but she has a last line to die for. •Alix Edwards writes of love that invents its own colours, that whirls us from drab reality into sensuous wonder, that “does not / rot / decay / or / spill / like / buckets / of disappointment”, a love that – when lost – leaves us “a grey reminder / of mangled dreams.” Like other work in the anthology, these poems are strangely full of hope even when depicting despair. Gorgeous. This is new writing at its best. The authors here are wild and fearless. They have things to say and are finding their own ways to say them. (un)common is just the start of their journeys. A brilliant collection by Lucent Dreaming.