NaPoWriMo #4: The chat-up Line

"A Ginger

is just a girl who hasn't had the fire fucked out of her yet"

*Draft Response*

                   Fight back 

Earthquake                    Richochet 

Heart sway to the beat of Celtic Hips

and Pray 

you open bloodshot eyes to the cavalcade of Goddesses

that grace you with their presence 

daily.

This hair is fire

my skin the whiteburn of ancient roots

Eyes the blue of grey rivers reflecting the moon

There is no in between

when you are the birth of elements.

If I am just the burning embers of a fire that hasn't been fucked out

follow my heat into the darkness

where many have tried before you

and failed.

Her Eyes...

Do you know how to fall in love with the soul of her?

Review: Skirrid Hill by Owen Sheers

From the cover I knew I was in for an exploration. The style of photography on the cover is called Body Landscaping, and it is when the object - often a human body - is made to look like an entire landscape on its own. In this case the shoulder and collar bones transformed into a valley, a hill, an estuary, a mountain. A landscape only too well known to many of us, iconic Wales.
   

  'Skirrid Hill' is a exploration of familiar introspection that takes the reader by the hand and helps them navigate their own personal history. It is only fitting then that we begin at the 'Last Ac't. There is a feeling here that we are seeing the writer in a similar role to the actor 'bowing as himself  for the first time all night.'. There is a distinct difference in confidence in Sheers second collection of poetry. A writer who is confident in his own raw emotion, confident even in the instability of image. The entire collection pivots on the grey area between having something, being one thing, and loosing it or becoming something else. Beyond that as the concept of the collection we see poems themselves altering before out eyes.
          Poems like 'The Farrier', that in tandem throw images of the farrier carrying on his days work, and that of a bride on her wedding day, alongside the ambiguity of the horse. All images pulling together to deliver the fatal blow as 'The sound of his steel, biting at her heels'.
     The winds of change are constantly blowing, I am older now than I have ever been and younger than I ever will be again. 'Inheritance' makes that abundantly clear, after the style of R.S. Thomas as Sheers ties in an incredible welsh poetic history to his work. 'From my father / ... / From my mother' here could mean the biological parentage or the rich heritage of poetry. the offspring, the barer of this tradition 'what they forged / in their shared lives;' - the heavy weight of this burden, but also the combined ancestry of it, a wonder that what humans really inherit from their families and from their environment, the collection continues to add to this image, speculating how we inherit the world around us and the skins of our old selves.
   An interesting vein of this collection is Sheers's investigation of language. Wales is a fascinating hub of bilingualism, but it hasn't always been this way. Just as his first collection 'The Blue Books' hovered on the edge of languages with it's obvious rooting in the blue books of 1847,the discussion continues now. In 'History' set in the Lleder Valley of North Wales the blades of slate make a 'rusted, / metallic sound' telling the 'story of stone'. Here mixing the Welsh language both with the landscape as ever present and also making it Other, disconnecting it from any known language.

       Sheers is one of my favourite writers both in Wales and generally. I devoured this collection.

Englynion series: Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus i pawb: Happy Sant David's Day everyone.

Sporting my spiffy Welsh Ladies Hat

 I love Wales. My mother is not from Wales, and I'm from the north. At times I struggle with my Welshness, but it is unignorable. There is an acceptance here for the creative which I haven't witnessed elsewhere (as the second photograph describes). Possibilities open up here, creative minds stumble upon each other in alleyways. Half of the people in the street are writers, the other half are musicians.

Throughout March I will be posting a series of Englynion (which are the British / Welsh equivalent of the haiku). I will discuss all things Cymru I have come to love and hate.


For now however I will leave you with the first Englyn I wrote,        inspired by a brilliant poet and tutor Andrew Taylor and                 published in Erbacce's 2012 summer issue.


 This is the poem that began my acceptance of and passion for English language Welsh poetry, a discovery I am grateful to for revolutionising my voice in poetry and leading me down the garden path.

I'm not nearly as Welsh as an Englyn,

Nor it's cynhanedd.

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau, Lloegr,

but I sing, yr ddraig goch, within.

This is a very rough Englyn, styled between Robert Davies'  the Penfyr. I will also be trying different styles including the milwr, crych and lleddfbroest.

Trans: 

   I'm not nearly as Welsh as an Englyn

 Nor it's cynhanedd 

(essentially it's harmony, but more to come of this)

    The land of my fathers, England, 

    but I sing, the red dragon, within.

               

Dydd Santes Dwynwen Hapus! - Happy Saint. Dwynwen Day.

25th January is the Welsh Valentines day. Celebrating Saint Dwynwen, and her dedication to lovers. Stori Santes Dwynwen is fascinating and you can read a lot more of it on the BBC's website. Today I offer up a series of linked Englyn's, following in Robertson Davies' style, which you read more on here.

     In short Santes Dwynwen was the daughter of Brychan Brycheiniog, who fell in love with Maelon Dyfodrull. The two lovers planned to marry but Dwynwen's father forbade it. After this Dwynwen prayed to be let out of her love, and Maelon was turned into ice. As the story continues, an angel appears to Dwynwen and gives her three wishes. She wishes for Maelon to be free, that she will never marry, and that she could spend her life helping anyone in pain through love.
   Dwynwen goes on to establish many Christian churches, along with her sister Cain and her brother Dyfnan. Dwynwen's own church is off Anglesey, Llanddwyn, the remains of the church are still there and people still travel to it to pray to Dwynwen to help them with their love.
 
The Englyn is a short Welsh and Cornish poetic form, similar to that of the Haiku.

   Santes Dwynwen

               

Maelon, in your heart, do you still shiver,

from prayers icy dart

the angel of the river,

Brychan Brycheiniog's temper?

Maybe you dream, with me, at Llanddwyn,

a swollen memory

Angelsey, or an omen

of what we should have known, then.

But now you have gone, with Dyfnan and Cain,

and our sublime bygone,

to another place and time.

Here. I, mother to love's crime.

  

Review: another country: haiku poetry from Wales - Anthology

I love a good anthology. Or any anthology for that matter. My first exposure to most styles of writing is through anthologies, to get a taste for the way one theme can be interpreted by different writers, it's a beautiful thing. This accumulation of writers is no different.

another country brings together haiku's from all around Wales, some Welsh by birth, others choosing to settle in Wales, some influenced by Welsh culture that seeps through their writing.We learn a lot about the haiku from both experts and new comers in this collection. I was pleasantly surprised to find many examples of the haibun in this collection which pads it out even more. i particularly enjoyed In the Air by Lynne Rees (who's work shines brilliantly throughout the collection) which uses the haiku as flashbacks or snapshots within the prose, accentuating the character development; I also enjoyed Pilgramage to Pennant Melangell by Noragh Jones which again is a superb haibun, incorporating the welsh into the haiku passages which adds to the overall feeling of place, and is an interesting comparison for the haiku in both languages.

  The anthology is split into chapters, whereas this seems on the surface unnecessary thinking about it further the chapter names add to the traditional concept and conception of the haiku rather than as writing prompts; appealing to the ancestral nature of the traditional poetic forms.
Chapters include Age and Youth, Culture and Society, Memory and Imagination and Nature Observed amongst others. The poetry itself seems to flow out of these lines and merges into a collaborative effect at the strength of the haiku and traditional forms to fully realise modern life. some of  my favourite's from the collection are those in both Welsh and English, the contrast and comparisons between the forms aesthetic nature and lyricism is quite telling of the Welsh poetic tradition, such as Arwyn Evans offering :

cysgodion dail yn disgyn         Leaf shadows fall
i'r pwll disglair                         into the glistening pond
... gwrandawaf                          ... I listen

or some that play on common Welsh images, like Pamela Brown's

bright sunlight
through birch leaves -
fingers ripple the harp

or others that are, if anything, bereft of place, but rely heavily on sound,

frosty bark
   as I squint the Pleiades
of fox, cadno, fox, fox                                 *cadno = fox
Nigel Jenkins

Originally I wouldn't have thought much about the haiku in Wales but the gem of this anthology are the essays. They contextualize the works perfectly. The haiku actually seems like the most obvious choice for the Welsh writer, appealing to the obsession with language and lyrical addiction that is present in most Welsh writers, in the tradition of the Englyn, the prevailing tradition of the cynhanedd and the practice of dyfahu, the haiku is a fabulous form to bridge the gap often perceived in English language Welsh writing and Welsh writing as a whole.  The collection has spurred my interest into the history of Welsh poetry even more, so some of that will be showing through my work as the research continues