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.