Zoë Skoulding has won the Wales Book of the Year poetry award with her collection Footnotes to Water, published by Seren, it was announced on Friday. 

In Footnotes to Water Skoulding follows the mysterious path of the culverted Afon Adda in Bangor, close to where she lives, half-heard under the metal plates of the observation chambers along its route. It leads her to the Bièvre, a lost Parisian stream that once ran through streets of tanneries and past the Gobelins tapestry factory, where the quality of a famous red dye was attributed to the river’s polluted water.

Skoulding, who is reader in the school of languages, literatures and linguistics at Bangor University, is the author of a number of poetry collections including The Museum of Disappearing Sounds, which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes award, and Remains of a Future City, which was longlisted for Wales Book of the Year.