Stories and Storytelling

                                                          

Given the scrapes my now sixteen week old puppy is getting into, I've been sorely tempted to start a children's book entitled "What A Mess!" Certainly when my children were young I would regale them with stories about a pup of that name who was causing chaos in his new home - as is Bryn in mine now. Those tales, along with ones about the More Please Fairy and Thermople the Bear (after a teddy we came across in Blaise Castle museum in Bristol) saw us through many car journeys and long country walks. But actually writing for children is a highly skilled occupation (as many "celebrities" have found out); I'm not sure my skills are up to it.

Another highly skilled occupation of course is that of the oral storyteller. This weekend sees the Festival of Storytelling here in Monmouth, two days full of events around the spoken word, some family ones, some adult ones. I'm really looking forward to the three that I've booked for. Do check the programme if you're in the area. Our Savoy Theatre is one of the oldest in Wales, it's won a lot of awards and it's the ideal place to listen to expert storytellers weaving magic with words.

It was the autumn equinox this week, the turning point into darker days. Harvest Festivals - very much a feature of my childhood - have been celebrated in local churches, but I've noticed how there's also much interest now in other and perhaps older traditions, especially Celtic ones, associated with the time of year. I particularly like the story behind Mabon. It's based on a tale in the Mabinogion about Mab ap Modron, a baby stolen from his mother. The child is kept captive until freed by the heroic Culhwch and a posse of wise animals. This lovely story symbolises youth and the promise of life and renewal after a period of darkness. As one who finds the cold, dark days of winter very trying indeed, it's one I certainly hold on to! 

Home and Away - but mostly home

Our anticipated hectic summer was interrupted by some unexpected health issues - but thankfully not before the National Eisteddfod. Reading at the festival (once I'd stopped shaking) was a great experience and the launch party for Adar Y Nant most enjoyable. That publication will probably mark the pinnacle of my Welsh writing achievement - but two days later on a trip to Cardigan Castle I couldn't resist having delusions of grandeur and had some fun posing in the Chair commemorating the very first Eisteddfod there in 1176! 

Some enforced leisure allowed me to catch up with some very overdue correspondence and quite a lot of very interesting reading. A fascinating poetry collection that I was asked to review was Exposure, War, Media and Democracy (Culture and Democracy Press, 2026) by Angela Graham. I'd recently met Angela at a reading at Cwtsh in Newport and was profoundly moved by her poems. They have their origin in responses to journalism, photography and film generated by the wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza or in civic confrontations involving governments or citizen activism. In my earlier career as a nurse I was caught up in one IRA mainland atrocity which has stayed with me ever since; I related very much to the poems on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In many of the war poems I found it was the sheer humanity of Angela's approach to such inhumane events that was the strength of her work. The collection makes for very sobering, thought provoking reading. 

The last few weeks have been considerably enlivened by the arrival of Bryn, our new Border Collie puppy. He's now 14 weeks old and both delightful and the devil incarnate. During his first week with us he chewed through our internet and landline connection; he's very partial to a good gnaw on skirting boards and the corners of the sideboard. The garden room where I usually write is well nigh impossible to puppy proof so I'm working largely from a well nibbled camping chair in the kitchen or at the patio table. It certainly puts a different perspective on things!

Inspiration and Indulgence

A busy week, starting at an exhibition in Dolgellau that grew from Byw Mewn Heddwch (Live in Peace), a year long art project for women and young people in Meirionnydd. Working with everything from textiles to pottery to poetry, groups had explored local and wider concepts of peace. It seems to me that in my lifetime there has not been a more urgent need to pursue ways of creating peace and I found the exhibits enormously inspiring. A flower and poetry festival the following day in Beddgelert in many ways echoed the theme and there were some stunning displays.

But the main purpose of my trip to North Wales was to spend a week at Ty Newydd, the national writing centre, "Writing the Body" with Zoe Brigley and Rupinder Kaur Waraich. Ty Newydd, as I've written so often before, has to be one of my favourite places on earth; this time it was made even more special by the wonderful group of enormously talented poets there, each one bringing their unique experience of the body from which to write. One in particular, Elizabeth Gibson, a young woman from Manchester, impressed me greatly. Her collection "A Love the Weight of an Animal" (Carmenta) I'm finding intensely moving. As always my early morning walks took me in Lloyd George's footsteps down to the Dwyfor - I sometimes feel the ghosts of he and his dog are wandering along the banks beside me!

I took the scenic route home yesterday and called in at another exhibition in the arts centre in Llanidloes. There's an annual exhibition there of some of the several hundred quilts that the centre holds. Wales has a centuries old tradition of quilt and blanket making and the social and political importance of the craft is fascinating to explore. To me though it's the stories behind the designs that interest me. We tell stories in many ways other than with words, and in quilting the materials used, their colours and textures, the way in which they are put together all tell a unique tale. One of the quilts yesterday had been worked by a woman who was going blind and the colours and arrangements told the story of her journey into sight loss. Another comparatively modern one (some were from the early to mid nineteenth century) was made up of pieces of Laura Ashley materials; as I'd worn a Laura Ashley dress to get married in forty years ago, that one had to be my favourite!

All good things have to come to an end of course, so now it's back to the desk and getting on with the writing. But tomorrow afternoon I'll be down in Newport to do a reading at The Cwtsh to mark the closing of John Briggs photographic exhibition of Writers in Wales. Your last chance to see it if you haven't already! Well worth a visit - and to hear an hour or so of the work of several local poets. Do come if you're in the area.

Voices

It was a weekend of voices - from home and away, the past and the present. We learn so much from other people's stories - and I'm so often enormously inspired by them. 

That was certainly the case on Saturday evening in Abergavenny, at the first ever Festival of Us, a gathering of creatives held to celebrate a member of the local community. The special guest was Maryna Korolova, a young woman who fled from the bombing of Kiev, eight months pregnant with her third child, who gave birth in an earth-floored bomb shelter, who made her way to Wales via Poland to settle with her family and found a thriving, much loved cafe. Last year she returned briefly to Ukraine to deliver parcels filled with donations from the people of Wales. Her testimony was incredibly moving. She reminded us that 200 years ago a Welshman named John Hughes, an engineer, had moved to the Ukraine to set up iron works there and to found the town that grew to become the city of Donetsk. He took with him many Welsh workers who were warmly received by local people. How fitting that some of that hospitality is being repaid to Ukrainian families all these years later at a time when they most need it.

Maryna sharing photos of
her homeland

After her talk - and a beautiful rendition of a Ukrainian folk song - we were invited to spend the evening drawing, writing, painting or making, and it was obvious from what was produced how inspired people felt. A lovely evening.

Sunday's voices were from the Usk Valley with poetry and harp music in the church of St. Bridget at Llansantffraed. I was born a stone's throw from the Afon Wysg, the River Usk, and in more recent years have walked almost every inch of its banks on the Usk Valley Walk.. The history and the local landscape came so vividly alive in the readings from the two poets, Paul Henry and Christopher Meredith. One of Paul's poems I particularly fell in love with resurrected local workhouse inhabitants, giving voice to the voiceless, which was very poignant. And, in good Welsh fashion, the afternoon included a superb tea! 

Farewell to a faithful friend

                                                           

Sometimes people say that writing is a lonely occupation. I've never found it so as I've always had one or other of my dogs by my side or at my feet. But last month I lost my beloved Beagle Carys, who had lain in her basket here in the garden room as I wrote, who had listened patiently to me reading and trying out ideas, who had lately come with me on nearly all the pilgrimages for my present project. An ex-breeding bitch on a ghastly puppy farm, we rescued her six and a half years ago and she was the loyalest of companions. I'm missing her enormously.

We're fortunate enough to live quite close to Ledbury and one of the highlights of my year is always going to the Poetry Festival that runs over ten days in June and July. This year I was unfortunately away for some of the time but still managed to make it to a couple of workshops, two fascinating films (on the very different, but both superb, poets Emily Dickinson and Ruth Fainlight) and a very interesting talk about the long serving Poet Laureate John Masefield and the Great War. Funding for festivals such as this is getting harder and harder - as with all arts ventures these days - but they offer so much enrichment to so many people, they are very much worth fighting for and supporting.

Yesterday evening I was at another interesting venue - and getting delusions of grandeur! The Cwtsh gallery in Newport was hosting the launch of a brilliant photographic exhibition "Write In The Eye" by John Briggs, with images of writers in Wales from 2002 to 2026. And there amongst the great and the good - Gillian Clarke, Dannie Absie, Menna Elfyn and so many well known others - were photos of some of us lesser mortals who also write and read at events here on this side of the border, myself included! John has been photographing writers from his earliest days in his native America and he gave a very entertaining talk on his experiences over the years. The exhibition runs until the end of July, with readings by some of the writers photographed on Sunday July 26th. Well worth a visit if you're in the area.

     

Poems and poets

I always find it exciting when proofs arrive for checking and I know that a project is nearing completion. But last night some very special proofs arrived - of a poetry collection to be published by Carreg Gwalch in the summer, a collection written by Welsh language learners. My poem Olion (Remains) features in it, my first Welsh language publication! I was doubly careful in checking it this morning. I'm so thrilled to be part of this project, the brainchild of Myrddin ap Dafydd, the writer and publisher who was elected as Archdruid of Wales in 2018.

When I first moved back to Wales I was delighted to find a nearby poetry hub in Abergavenny - Poetry Upstairs, which had been run by the poet Ric Hool for almost thirty years in the Hen and Chickens pub and showcased local and national poets on a monthly basis. Ric's death earlier this year has been mourned by many in the area and further afield but he was so pleased to know before he died that Poetry Upstairs (although now downstairs at the Melville Arts Centre!) would continue in the safe hands of Helen Northfield and Sharif Gemie. Last night saw the first evening since Ric's funeral and a couple of his poems were read in tribute before readings by the two featured poets, Mark Blayney from Cardiff and Zoe Skoulding from Bangor. They were very different poets exhibiting the breadth of poetry that had been Ric's lifelong passion - an interesting evening. 

Sharif Gemie reads from
Ric's final collection

Awards and AwayDays

I'm no night owl and, when it comes to writing, the early morning slot is definitely my most productive. But in the present heatwave dog walking has to take precedence! Much after 07.30 over the last few days and it's already been too warm. But being out first thing along the Valley paths offers a great chance to spot the local wildlife (a muntjac deer only a few yards from us on Thursday, a fox trotting past yesterday) and the bird song is fantastic. When we were first out this morning a long finger of mist hung low over the river but it very quickly burned off and the reflections in the water were beautiful.

Sadly the weather was not so kind last week for the Cheltenham Poetry Society's annual AwayDay, held this year at the Corse Lawn Hotel in Worcestershire, where their lovely garden was begging to be used but saw very little of us. An interesting day though, entitled "Away and Beyond" with some useful sessions led by Sharon Larkin, Roger Turner and David Ashbee. It was great to see many old colleagues from the Gloucestershire poetry scene and to hear some excellent poetry. Many thanks to the Society for their invitation to join them.

I was delighted to hear the news this week about one of my favourite bookshops - Griffin Books in Penarth. To add to its other awards (The UK Independent Bookshop of the Year in 2023, Wales Bookshop of the Year in March) it's been named as The Children's Bookseller of the Year in the British Book Awards. Should you be in the Penarth area the shop is definitely well worth a visit. It's owned by Mel Griffin, an amazingly energetic and enthusiastic colleague of mine at my Friday Welsh class. In addition to a host of author events and launches, she organises the Penarth Literary Festival each June, this year taking place in Belle Vue Park Pavilion. At a time when so much anxiety is expressed about children's reading, the work the shop does in encouraging young readers and supporting schools (they have their own Schools Manager and an ex-primary teacher on the staff) is tremendous. Congratulations, Mel - or I should say Llongyfarchiadau!

The year moves on

 I've just come in from my first real spring evening walk of the year. The birdsong was almost deafening, the light on the fields so atmospheric, the sun slipping down behind the hills under pink and grey clouds  just stunning. I don't doubt that by the weekend we'll be seeing more rain and probably more chill winds, but to have some respite after the dreary winter months - with the promise of more to come - seems to have put a smile on people's faces and a spring in their step.

March proved a much busier month than planned but a very interesting one nonetheless. Three workshops, an author's event, a talk to a local women's group on Digging Up The Family - and my first presentation to a group in Welsh! I lost a bit of sleep over that one I must say, but actually enjoyed it when it came to it. And staying with the Welsh - I've just had a poem in Welsh accepted for publication in a book by Carreg Gwalch, a very prestigious publisher here in Wales - a definite first there!!

April looks to be a more home based month, which I'm looking forward to. My pilgrimage project has been retrieved from the back burner where it had sat for several months over the winter. The research for that and the actual mini-pilgrimages are largely completed, so now there are mounds of notes, photographs, maps etc. waiting for transformation into a readable narrative. Of course the nice thing about writing memoir is the reliving of experiences as you relate them - the "savouring of them twice", to paraphrase Laurie Lee. And, challenging though some of those experiences on this project have been, they've all been enjoyable - so hopefully the writing up will be too.

Launched at last!

                                       

They say that all things come to those who wait - well occasionally we have to wait a little longer than we'd planned! But after a lengthy gestation and a long delivery, Writing A Life was eventually launched into the world on Valentine's Day. The staff at Monmouth library were as welcoming as ever and the sun deigned to come out to celebrate the occasion with us. My thanks go especially to Lydia Dowding, library manager, and to my five contributors, Marie Griffiths, Jennifer Harland, Tony O'Hare, Coleen Sadler and Grace Walsh, attendees at workshops I'd run who allowed me to share some of their writing in the text. It was lovely to have them taking part in the launch, which closed with Tony's rendition of his song Chips on the Mountain (Sglodion ar y Mynydd). So many folk songs over the centuries have evolved from life stories  - just one of the many and varied ways in which we can document lives and times, our own, our family's and other people's.

Thanks for the welcome - and the welcome back

A busy start to the New Year. I was delighted to be invited to speak to the First Friday group at Cwtsh Community and Arts Centre in Newport the week before last about Digging up the Family - especially as much of the action in that book took place within a stone's throw of the Centre, albeit a very long time ago! The group extended a warm welcome on a very cold night, and I really enjoyed meeting so many interesting people in such a pleasant venue. It was my first visit to Cwtsh (previously a small branch library) but it won't be my last. I'm hoping to run some workshops there later in the year.

Talking about an
aunt's Cub Mistress 
warrant signed by
Baden Powell himself

And I had another lovely welcome - or rather welcome back - at Women Aloud in Cheltenham yesterday. Over the past couple of years I've really missed the women's group that nurtured my poetry when I first set out on that path; it was wonderful to be back yesterday with old friends - and supportive critics! Some writers, I know, find writing groups unhelpful, but to me they're an integral part of a writing life and I've valued the ones to which I've belonged enormously. So, despite the geographical challenges now, I'm very happy indeed to return to the fold! 

Seasons greetings

                                                   

Perhaps this year more than ever we all need some light in the darkness. Nationally and internationally the last twelve months have seen so much turbulence, discord, ill-will and destruction; on a personal level for far too many people it's been a challenging year of hardship and sorrow. Whatever your faith or lack of it, however you're spending this Christmas season - I hope it will bring some light into your life, and for all of us some hope for a more positive future.

Looking for a Christmas present ...

                                           

.... for a writer / family history enthusiast in your life? Look no further! Writing A Life will be out in a few days now - as soon as copies are available, the details will be on my Buy My Books page. This book has certainly been a while in the coming but it's now very nearly here and I'm really excited to be "getting it out there". Having worked with so many people over the years, helping them to put on paper the stories they want - and need - to tell, I'm so pleased to now be able to get the message to a wider audience.

However "ordinary" we feel them to be, all of our stories - the personal ones and our family ones - have the potential to be fascinating, and they deserve to be told, whether for our offspring and future generations or a more general readership. There are plenty of more "academic" tomes on life writing, but this book sets out to be a gentle prompt, an encouragement and an innovative guide for those just setting out to piece together the jigsaw of a life or lives. And these dark winter evenings are a good time to start - so watch this space! 

Very nearly there!

For a short book that was meant to take a relatively limited amount of time, my present project has turned into a bit of a marathon! But the finishing line is definitely in sight now and the manuscript will be with the printer tomorrow. I have enjoyed working on it though. Life writing has been a particular interest of mine for many years now. "Writing A Life" offers guidance to people wanting to chronicle a story (their own or someone else's); it's based on the insights I've gained working with individuals and groups in the community and in residential care settings. Attendees at several workshops that I've run have contributed to the book too, and I'm very grateful for their input - it demonstrates beautifully the wide variety of styles and approaches that people can adopt.

As usual at the end of a project, there's a fair amount of catching up to do on the non-literary fronts! Things that have definitely gone on the back burners while writing fills the days. So it's time for a blitz on those before getting back in harness and picking up the pieces on the pilgrimage write-ups. Now the  autumnal weather is limiting the possibilities for the actual walks but at least I have the pleasure of doing again on paper the ones I've already done - as Laurie Lee said about autobiographical writing, that revisiting is "a celebration of living and an attempt to hoard its sensations".

National Poetry Day 2025

Happy National Poetry Day! For some of us every day is a poetry day but for so many people poetry simply doesn't feature on their horizon. Today the national festival, begun by the Forward Arts Foundation in 1994, is bringing it a little more into focus all over the country - in libraries and community centres, on social media and (crucially) in schools. The theme this year is "Play" and there are so many innovative resources available through the website to prompt all of us to have a play with, and to get creative with, words. From early childhood, poetry has been an integral part of my life and I firmly believe that every child has a right to enjoy it and to learn as much from it as I have.

At the moment though I’m focused very much on prose. A deadline that seemed an age away is now looming very large. I’ve got a half-completed manuscript that needs finishing, editing and sending off for printing within the next three weeks. Time pressure always focuses my mind but also panics me; with every publication I think “Next time it’ll be different” but it never is!

A big thank you though to the people who came to my Writing Our Lives workshop in Tintern last Saturday. It was, as always, such a privilege to share people's memories, to hear about their struggles and successes, their hopes and aspirations, and to help them think through ways of getting all those down on paper, both for themselves and for a wider audience. A really enjoyable and worthwhile day.

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.