Shook Up!

 

 An interesting evening at the Melville Centre in Abergavenny yesterday. Ric Hool - who has done so much for poetry in the area, running the popular Poetry Upstairs for years, encouraging new writers and bringing together very diverse voices to great effect - was launching his new collection, "Shook up!" (Red Squirrel Press). A very prolific poet over the years, this is his thirteenth collection and a sizeable audience came to celebrate it. The evening got off to a cheerful start with music by The Grizzly Bears,  with some great retro songs, before Ric was introduced by the writer Ian Brinton.

A proud Northumbrian lad (although he's lived in Wales longer than anywhere else in his life), much of Ric's poetry is influenced by his roots. I particularly enjoyed his rendition of his dialect poem  about the myth behind the creation of the Farne Islands and North Star, his poem arranged around a Sat Nav's interminable instructions as he heads northwards towards Tyneside. His poems have such energy, such vitality. There are no long ones in this collection, but even the shortest of them - just four or five lines - repays reading and rereading. Brevity in no way means superficiality.

Retracing my steps

Twenty years ago my husband and I set out to walk the 220 miles of the Severn Way, the path that traces the length of the longest river in Britain through Powys, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. As we were both working full time in those days, we had to do it in short bursts; in the end it took us two and a half years to complete. But yesterday evening I travelled it again - in under an hour, at Griffin Books in Penarth, in the company of Sarah Sian Chave, the author of Hafren, the Wisdom of the River Severn. Her fascinating talk brought back so many memories - but also introduced me to so much that I hadn't known about the river, despite living by it throughout my childhood and walking every inch of the Way.

It's hard to categorize the book (which I then stayed up reading well into the night). It's a travel book, a nature book, a history book; it looks at the mythology associated with the river and its surroundings, speaks of the poetry inspired by it, points to the sustainability lessons we so urgently need to learn from it. It's beautifully illustrated by the author's sister, Rachel Collis - and it so makes me want to walk that path again.

For rather different reasons Sarah's travels along the Severn also had to be undertaken in a bits and pieces fashion, and she relied on family support to complete them. But in her Reflection at the end of the book she writes about learning from the river - learning that we are all interdependent. And that it's only by realising and acknowledging this that we can ensure survival - our own and that of our planet.

Festival fever

The best laid plans.... Having plotted out a writing schedule for August, I managed to come back from the Eisteddfod with yet another bout of Covid, which threw everything into disarray. I'm slowly getting back on track again but deadlines are looming and progress needs to be made.

But our few days at the Eisteddfod were well worth it. I spent far too much time - and money - in the book tents, listened to some of my favourite singers, heard the wonderful Mererid Hopwood reading from her new poetry collection "Mae" and was able to practice plenty of Welsh. We were staying in a delightful cottage, named Cut Moch (a very comfortable conversion of - as the name translates - a pig sty!) in a remote area of Powys. We managed a couple of other visits too, to Plas Newydd (of Ladies of Llangollen fame) and Cwm Pennant (of St. Melangell fame - her story had been one of my favourites when writing Once Upon A Time In Wales). So it was a good break overall.

Mererid Hopwood with musical accompaniment

Already though the mornings have a definite chill to them and the evenings are beginning to draw in - and, after so long a dry period, many of the trees are turning and dropping their leaves weeks prematurely. "Mists and mellow fruitfulness" seem to be almost upon us. The diary is rapidly filling up with the usual autumnal commitments - various meetings, workshops, book fairs - and of course deadlines! But I'd like to squeeze just a bit more out of summer first ...

Stories behind and stories within

 I always have a yen to know "the story behind the story". Whilst I can enjoy an author or a poet's work as it stands, I find that I enjoy it more when I know something of the creator as a person - something of their background, what has influenced them. I like to be able to see them in context. And a recent visit to North Wales has helped me to better understand the author Kate Roberts, to see her in her context.

In Wales Kate Roberts has long been known as "Brenhines Ein Llen", the queen of our literature. She was born in 1891, writing many novels and short stories between the 1920s and her death in 1985. A long time political activist, she brilliantly but simply portrayed the harsh conditions of working class life in the first half of the twentieth century. In later life she bequeathed to the nation the home in which she had been brought up, Cae'r Gors, a tiny stone cottage in the village of Rhosgadfan near Caernarfon. It was there, amongst the spoil heaps and remains of the once flourishing slate industry, that her writing came into perspective for me. I had just finished rereading "Feet In Chains", perhaps her best known novel, in which the reality of life for a slate-quarrying family in the days before industrial safeguards and union representation meant fluctuating income, poor health and limited horizons. For women, keeping hearth and home and family together was tough. Standing at the foot of the slag heaps on the mountainside behind Cae'r Gors, the weight of that world was almost palpable.

Being away for a few days also gave me the opportunity to reflect on my present project, to cast a rather more critical eye over progress to date. Whilst I've been happy with the content I've generated so far, I've been less sure of the structure and I've been trying out a couple of alternatives.  One seemed a better "fit" but I still wasn't a hundred per cent committed to it. Casually flicking through a magazine I'd picked up whilst we were away, I happened to come across an excellent example of an approach I'd initially discounted. A simple enough idea - a "story within a story". There was a sudden realization that this could work (and could have worked all along). Now, I'm glad to say, it certainly seems to be doing so!

Home and away

 I have a new "toy" on my phone - the Merlin app from Cornell University that identifies birdsong. And I'm fast becoming addicted to it. On my walk by the river with the dog this morning, in a five minute slot it picked up twelve different birds, from a thrush and a robin to a chiffchaff and a blackcap. Before I would just have labelled what I was hearing as "birdsong" but now I'm learning to discriminate and - hopefully! - to identify. 

As writers we often use the natural world as a character in our writing, and to flesh out that character we need to be able to home in on the detail as well as taking the broad brush approach. I think earlier writers - nineteenth and early twentieth century ones - were more in tune with the natural world and it fed more convincingly into their work. There are exceptions now of course (the brilliant Robert Macfarlane for one), and nature writing is certainly increasing in popularity as a genre. But, in more general writing, breadth often trumps depth - and I know that's a danger I need to keep in mind in mine.

June has flown past and, interspersed with the writing, has certainly brought some interesting events. At the beginning of the month I was in Aberystwyth for a women's peace conference, a follow-up from the centenary events that marked 100 years since the Welsh Women's Peace Petition of 1923. Five years after "the war to end all wars" more than 400,000 Welsh women (both of my grandmothers among them) signed an anti-war declaration that was taken to the USA and presented to the women of America, in the hope that America would join the League of Nations. In Aberystwyth we were looking at the role women can, and do, play in our current, decidedly dangerous, world. I was immensely moved by many of the accounts we heard from war-torn countries. The poem below was written by an anonymous civilian fleeing conflict in Cameroon.

Staying with that theme - I've just finished reading The Displaced by Sharif Gemie (Abergavenny Small Press, 2024). It's the story of a young, idealistic couple in the aftermath of the Second World War who face challenges beyond all expectation whilst working on the continent with a United Nations humanitarian team. For me it was one of those books that you can't stop reading until you've finished it. In particular the character of the wife, Eleanor, is so well drawn you become really invested in her story. Historical fiction though it may be, there are so many parallels with present day conflicts and their aftermath too, so it makes salutary reading.

Poetry readings, a workshop at Cardiff Tramshed and a research trip to St. Davids have eaten into a lot of writing time this month though, so it needs to be back to the desk for most of July I think. But I will be glad when the current heatwave abates - I write in the garden room, where the temperature today has hit 39 degrees so I've retreated with the laptop to a darkened living room. I always find this sort of heat completely enervating so I'm really glad that my only deadlines at the moment are self-imposed. 

"Open a book, open a new world"

 How depressing it was to read two articles this week - the first about a forthcoming State of the Nation in Adult Reading 2025 report and the second concerning the dwindling number of parents who read to their children at bedtime. In a decade the number of adults reading regularly has fallen by 5% and many people questioned for the report said that they frequently don't finish a book they've started; a much offered explanation for this was an inability to focus because of external distractions. And a lot "Gen Z" parents say they don't read to their children because they don't have time, dislike reading the same book over and over again (and what child doesn't have that great favourite?!), they don't like reading themselves or find it boring.

It's all too easy to judge, all too easy to criticize, and obviously everyone's personal and family situation is different. But I find these trends deeply saddening. As a working mother I had to carve out time to read to my children - but I wouldn't have missed those sessions, curled up on the settee or on their beds, for the world. Neither would their father who, when he was working locally, continued sharing reading time with them way after they were able to read for themselves. It was an integral part of family life, and a much valued one on both sides. 

There are so many competing demands on children's time and attention now and on parent's energies and finances. We're blessed in this country with several excellent reading support charities - Book Trust, Read for Good, Bookmark Reading, Doorstep Library amongst them - and they do great work, especially with disadvantaged children. But it seems that we have an uphill task ahead to ensure that every child not only has access to books but to the encouragement and support to read them. And that may be far more challenging than simply putting the books in their hands.

In and Out

 I was very glad not to be at home much of last week. Domestic chaos ensued after the breakdown of the freezer and the jamming of the electronic garage door - and a Bank Holiday ensured that no-one was available to deal with either and that everyone then had a backlog to work through. How dependent we are on others to keep our lives ticking over smoothly! And how easily domestic mishaps upset carefully drawn up plans.

But the downs of last week were definitely outweighed by the ups. I spent a thoroughly enjoyable day helping at a Hands on Harp event. Forty children had the opportunity to work with professional harpists under the auspices of the Lady Llanover Society and the short concert they gave at the end of the day was delightful. Then I visited the national arboretum at Westonbirt and did a lovely walk in memory of Dave Laycock, the writer Rona Laycock's late husband. The rhododendrons were in full bloom, giving spectacular splashes of colour, and our guide was a fount of information on their history, their care and stories about them. Dave had been a volunteer guide at Westonbirt for some time and it was so appropriate an event through which to remember him.

                                        

But the highlight of the week had to be my visit to the Temple of Peace in Cardiff. In the year I've been working on the pilgrimage project I've visited some amazing places and had some wonderful experiences. But the few hours that I spent at the Temple of Peace were special indeed. The building in itself is lovely - an Art Deco construction dedicated to the cause of peace in 1938 and now housing, amongst other things, the Welsh Centre for International Affairs. In the Crypt is the Book of Remembance. in which are recorded "the names of the men and women of Welsh birth and parentage and of all the men belonging to the regiments of Wales who gave their lives in the war 1914 -1918". I was invited to read the welcome that precedes the daily turning of a page. In the years after the opening of the Temple bereaved families would make pilgrimages to hear their loved ones names read out; I found it immensely moving to be reading the words which they would have heard in those circumstances. It felt a real privilege to be doing so.