Milieu’s moving to Swansea! Milieu is a night of literature, spoken word, art, photography and visual concepts, bringing together a collective of writers and artists alike. Held quarterly in Cardiff since 2015, this year Milieu will move to a new permanent home in Swansea. Join the #SwanseaFringe in welcoming Milieu to this ugly, lovely town (or should that be pretty, shitty city?) with this special celebratory spoken word event, featuring poets Glyn Edwards, Mab Jones, Rhys Milsom and Bobby Parker.
Remember the snows before Easter? The storms personified with cousins’ names? In a spring that seems an age ago now, I accepted a series of invitations to read at literary festivals. They seemed so far into the future, that despite advising everyone on Twitter and Facebook to ‘tattoo the dates’ on their forearms, I didn’t plot the events on the kitchen calendar myself. So it was that July became the month my wife now refers to as ‘three readings and a house move’ and that kitchen calendar is somewhere in a box-fort in the shed.
The RS Thomas festival in Aberdaron, I discovered too late, had clashed with the Terry Hetherington Awards Prize at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and the launch of Cheval 11, which I had co-edited with Rose Widlake. Fortunately, getting to Swansea on a Friday night from North Wales, is as notoriously difficult as getting a fixed moving-in date from a buyer’s solicitors, so I was excused the odyssey to South Wales by the founder Aida Birch, and encouraged to drive West Walesward to deliver a talk on the many guises of ‘Iago Prytherch’. Or, more to the point, the many interpretations of Iago Prytherch according to the many guises of RS Thomas.
Susan Forgerty had organised a weekend of activities celebrating the life and work of Thomas and his wife, the artist, Mildred Eldridge. My own reading, for which the gallery space in the National Trust Centre at Porth-y-Swnt was uncomfortably warm and uncomfortably full, was a rewarding and fulfilling hour. As well as sharing my own poems and revealing how they were inspired by the RS Thomas I’d been force-fed at school, spoon-fed at university and has been cluster-feeding on thereafter. I was fortunate to hear work read by poets in the audience and, most special of all, had the opportunity to listen to Jack Rendell read his poems from Cheval 11. Having had anecdotes about hedgehogs and moles exchanged on the night, it was a perplexing Saturday morning to encounter both animals on our journey home. The hedgehog, curled in my son’s unbelieving hands like a dragon’s egg; the mole with his paddling paws and sleepshut eyes.
At Lit Caerleon, seven days later, our solicitor was on holiday and the house move was still to be finalised. So, my wife and I travelled to Newport, abandoning the empty boxes in the hallway, where we were greeted into the event marquee by the most welcoming of hugs from Rajvi Glasbrook, who, along with her husband Jon and a committee of benevolent literature-aholics organise Wales’ most intimate of festivals. After my own reading, I spent a few wonderful hours in the company of writers and poets and readers and met a cast of names that Twitter had made me feel were as friends: Tony Curtis, Mab Jones, Murray Lachlan Young, Natalie Holborrow, Joao Morais, Dan Tyte. I met another talented poet from the Terry Hetherington Award, Niall Ivin, and revelled in the conversation between Gary Raymond, Craig Austin and Patrick Mcguinness. Their pertinent debate about being unable to witness history as it happens about you, yet being compelled to reflect on in art reminded me of two A-Level years of dismayed notetaking about the Corn Laws, and to question whether Brexit will be more astonishing for students in two hundred years than it is presently. Everybody was having too much fun to tell me that the roads would be closed until midday the next day for a cycle race I’d never heard of.
And then we moved house.
Subsequently, I travelled alone last weekend to Holyhead to read at the Gwyl Cybi Festival in the Ucheldre Centre while my wife waved a wallpaper steamer in goodbye at me as I challenged the summerholidaycaravantailbacks of the A55. Having judged the poetry competition for the events, together with Manon Ros, I was eager to translate the anonymous entries into real faces and accents. Vanessa Owen and Karen Ankers had assembled a line-up of local singers and poets and had encouraged applicants from across Wales and Northern England to attend to read their verse. Martin Daws read an memorable, impassioned ode to Bethesda, James Lloyd read two poems from Cheval 11, and a breathless Matthew Smith arrived from his Swansea-origin in time to announce: his first time in North Wales; first time camping; first time entering a poetry a poetry competition, and, as I was about to discover, hearing the poem I’d selected as the winner being read aloud in a hopeful but unknowing voice; first time winning a competition.
When I got home, my wife had pulled the wallpaper from the living room and exposed the names of the former incumbents on the walls. The following day, a tourist stopped outside and, brittle as old paper, wound his way up the short, steep drive. He revealed how he’d lived here when the house was first built and how the signature on one of the walls was his.
Having enjoyed a month of hearing others’ poetry, I felt a new poem had just announced itself at my new front door.
Glyn Edwards, North Wales, gives voices to muted members of literature
In his forthcoming collection of poetry, Glyn Edwards has given voices to muted members of literature. He will share how his search to find the illusive voice of Iago Prytherch, in the dozens of poems RS Thomas dedicated to him, took him twenty years and three continents to accomplish. Members of the audience will be encouraged to share their favourite of RS Thomas’ poems, or read any home-spun verse inspired by his work. In his role as Trustee of the Terry Hetherington Award, Glyn will also be discussing how new Welsh writers can begin to carve out their own spaces in their country’s literature.
This year’s festival and competition will be celebrating the work of R. S. Thomas. The competition will be judged by the poet Glyn F Edwards and writer Manon Steffan Ros.
The winners will be announced at the open mic event on Saturday, July 21st 2018 at the Cybi Festival, The Ucheldre Centre, Holyhead. Poetry competition information
I’ll be arranging a poetry treasure hunt around the festival site, offering free workshops for children and adults to assemble their own poems taking inspiration from the ‘treasure’ they have ‘dug up’.
Members from the Colwyn Bay Writers Circle will be in attendance, helping as many aspiring poets as possible to polish and improve their own work.
Gwledd Conwy – October 27th – 29th
There’ll be a range of writing activities and workshops aimed at children 5-8, 8+ and 14+, including sensory poems – free verse poetry using the shapes and sights of the festival. Recipe poems – using recipes from festival events as inspiration, create instructional verse on personal themes such as travel, food, friendship. Feast sonnets – how to write a love poem for a day at the festival.
As well as creating a festival poem during the weekend, I’ll attempt to assemble the sights, smells and tastes of two days into a piece of writing.
The Boathouse crowds eddied in the bright light all week. As the weather calmed and the sun visited more generously, tourists to Laugharne sat by the wide bay for longer and longer. On one welcoming day, a pair of dog-walkers and their muddy corgi, arrived when the River Taf was heavy in the estuary and left when it was barely visible; we’d spent much of the afternoon in the Thomas’ yard together.
Commonly, visitors would arrive like the garden’s resident robin, flying down in fleeting sortees and disappearing just as anonymously. Some came in passing flocks, such as the affable murmuration from University of Wales Trinity St Davids, staying to pick at Welsh teas, to share scones, to warm their wings. They spoke in a vibrant rabble of Mandarin, French, Canadian and the yard seemed hushed and dusky when they’d flown away. And others were regular migrants, visiting the Writing Shed and the Boathouse on an annual, or more frequent pilgrimage.
The writer and poet John Bilsborough came to collect some books from his residency the week before. He showed me the stunning collection of writers’ names and messages he’d gathered in his career journal: R.S. Thomas; Victoria Wood; John Betjemen. Another artist to visit was the seascape painter Gareth Hugh Davies, who brought his family of illustrators for lunch. All indulged the drawing challenge with their unique styles, Gareth’s daughter indulged me with her sketchbook which was flawlessly assembled and carefully beautiful.
While other guests were noteworthy for their energy and vigour, such as a rare pair of articulate children from Penrith who produced the most-savage of sea imagery.
And memorable for their charisma, as a poetess and her husband who drew and drew and drew and shared their literature passions as though we were long friends.
After work one day, I visited Newport and read at The Lonely Crowd launch evening. Heavy roadworks choked the journey there, and the M4 on the drive home felt as long as a continent. Though the few hours spent in the Murenger were more stimulating and satisfying that I could have gleefully anticipated. Hosted by John Lavin, readings from Tony Curtis, Carla Manfredino, Alix Nathan, John Freeman, Craig Austin, Rebecca Lawn formed a collage illustrating just how intriguing the literature scene is in South Wales currently. Chris Cornwell read his ‘Last Night Down Whetstone Road’ in a voice glossy with Dylan’s aesthetic verve for phonetics, Gary Raymond read a story about immigration and fear and stereotype, and veiled pertinent satire around wonderful, characters such as the tale’s ubiquitous Ellis.
Ordinarily, on a Friday afternoon, I’d be stood in Ysgol Pen-y-Bryn’s assembly hall, watching certificates be awarded to inspired learners. On this occasion, they were watching the boathouse and writing shed through my eyes. Or, more precisely, through a FaceTime connection. The Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Raynor, was in attendance at the school, together with a local MP, and they observed the whole school attempt a modern twist on a Dylan Thomas poem: ‘Have you Ever Seen Half Term?
On the weekend, my wife arrived with my son and we took the work from the week along Dylan’s route about Sir John’s Hill. While retreading ‘The Birthday Walk’, she helped me film a video compilation of illustrations, my son made atmospheric leaf rustling effects and lingered precariously on steep images.
On one afternoon, when Dylan’s door was leaned shut, two ladies from the boathouse improvised a reading from my poem ‘Caitlin’, in response to Dylan’s ‘Do Not Go Gentle’ and I filmed it to store for when my debut collection, ‘Conversations’, is published next year. Or for when Judith or Elen achieve fame in their respective fields of ceramics and translation. Back at ‘The Pelican’, housing and feeding me until I began to bloat and sprout tight curls of hair, I was given lessons on sculpture and whisky by the artist David Gunther.
And yesterday, I drove my family home. Home. Up the serpentine Aberystywth Road. My son was poorly as we passed Dolgellau, poorly as we approached Machynlleth, as though he was already enduring withdrawal symptoms from his brief time in Laugharne. Reflecting back today, I too feel a stab homesick for a place that had become so welcoming to me.
The hall is pleasantly packed and hums
with whispered voices like a weekday wine bar
or an autumnal garden near the village road.
The space echoes handsomely.
The compere stands outside, a robin
singing warm welcome, his wings wider
than the open doors. He shuffles from foot to foot,
checks his watch, nibbles a fingernail.
Across the room is a face I see and recall. Remember?
We talked on a commuters’ train to Crewe, before you
interviewed me for a place on a teaching course there.
Then shared the trainride back home, a decade ago.
The poets arrive, bless the congregation
with a shared prayer and then sit. The raised stage
quickly becomes a kitchen conversation and invisible smokes
of cigarette coax concealed wine glasses,
chandeliers soften to down lights,
coughs become the dog yawning and both men forget the crowd
that listens like an eavesdropper to their secrets,
complicit. Each hopes the other won’t reveal them.
She traced her forefinger beneath each line,
as slowly and deliberately as one learning to read,
stroking the skin of the page
so the words stood up like tiny hairs.
‘The task,’ I said, ‘is to make it louder
by hiding some of the poem in the dark.’
But she stared down at the marker pen
as though it was a bullet or a spent shell,
its damage pre-empted, permanent
and, instead, closed her eyes. In her dark,
she shadowed out the sounds of classroom chairs
being clunk-stacked on the tables, the goodbye bell,
the ‘don’t run down the corridors.’
The poem and the pen and girl were gone
when I returned to the room after bus duty.
‘This poem is about silence, not shouting,’
she tells me the next morning, while the class,
cold and uncaring, slip from their slick coats
into echoing conversations.
Her markings have devoured the poem
so the silhouette that remains is skeletal;
bones she has spat are now shards,
the remaining ribs sharp and dangerous.
All the flat noise has been carved from the paper
and when I rub my finger over the scars made
by her scalpel, to gauge the gulleys there,
the wet marker pricks my fingerprint with ink,
and the sentiment sinks into me anew.
glynfedwards 