Out and about

 Since that last post winter has given way to spring; the snowdrops have come and gone, as have most of the daffodils, but the magnolias and azaleas are now in full bloom - this one is just outside my writing room and I can see it from the desk. Cowslips are beginning to give the fields that lovely lemon-yellow haze and the bluebells and anemones are out in the woods. I'm just about surfacing from a difficult couple of months to find the world alive and busy (though the least said about the political situation the better ...) Hopefully the trials that beset my research last year are well and truly behind me - so it's onwards and upwards.

The lovely weather over the last couple of weeks has been ideal for "travelling with intent to places of significance" as I'm defining the pilgrimages I'm undertaking for the new book. I've had fascinating visits to places as diverse as Dylan Thomas's old school, Coleg Trefeca (the home of Hywel Harris and the cradle of the 18th century Revival), several holy wells in South Wales and the Strike! exhibition at the National Museum. In the coming weeks I've got several mini-pilgrimages coming up further afield. I'm particularly keen to follow in the poet R. S. Thomas's footsteps and to undertake the Anne Griffiths walk near Lake Vyrnwy. I could do with the weather holding up for both of those, though I doubt that it will. 

A quick doodle on the magnetic board
at the Dylan Thomas Centre

Writing up the pilgrimages has had to fit in around the actual visits, but I'm very much looking forward to a block of undisturbed time to make some more concerted progress on that front. I'm also looking forward to running a couple of workshop days this coming term, one in the lovely Wye-side village of Tintern, in the shadow of the very atmospheric ruin of the Cistercian abbey. However, I'll be very much a learner myself before that - I'm off to the national language centre at Nant Gwrtheyrn again in a few weeks to battle on with my Welsh. I've been reading a lot of Welsh poetry recently - but let's just say that I can't see my own attempts there ever leading to an Eisteddfod chair!

Hints of spring

 I'm always excited by the arrival of the first snowdrops and I was delighted to come across a patch under a hedge in mid Wales last Thursday morning. But then in the afternoon I found a clump of daffodils in full bloom in a churchyard a couple of miles away - and came home to find my Christmas cactus (which had refused point blank to flower at the requisite time last year) just coming into bud, more than a month belatedly. Nature seems to be getting more than a little confused with things these days ...  

But my second Writing Our Lives group is well underway now and the eight participants appear to be enjoying it as much as I'm enjoying facilitating it. As with the first group, they come from very varied backgrounds and have very different life experiences from which to write. And their modes of expression are so individual, so personal. For those writing for generations coming after them, this is so important. A ghost writer (and I've recently seen several adverts from individuals offering such writing services) could certainly write their stories for them - but for their authentic voices to jump from the page, to bring their days and years to life demands so much more than such simple recounting. 

I'm now getting back on track with the pilgrimage project that was derailed by last years' health and family issues. I spent a fascinating, if decidedly chilly, weekend walking in the footsteps of the Chartist marchers in the Newport Uprising of 1839, finishing in the grounds of St. Woolos Cathedral at the site of the unmarked grave that is the last resting place for ten of them, cut down by soldiers lying in wait at the Westgate. If you're not familiar with their story - their contribution to the fight for universal suffrage and democracy -  do look it up. And a fictionalised account (but one based on very thorough research) is Requiem for a Patriot by Alexander Cordell, and that's a very good read.  

A new dawn?

                                                     

I've long since given up on New Year resolutions! In fact "The Photo I Didn't Take" has a poem in it about my singular lack of success with them - they've inevitably "gone AWOL - out with the empties" by mid-January. But I do look forward with good intentions at the start of the year - and a stunning dawn sky gets me off to a very positive start. I was fortunate to be have both a poetry collection and a prose volume published in 2024 but in other ways it proved a difficult year - as it did in the wider world for so very many people, for some in catastrophic ways. But perhaps the dawning of 2025 could offer hope of better things to come. Here's to a peaceful, healthy, happy and productive one for us all.