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How would one portray Dylan Thomas as a young blogger, and a Welsh blogger to boot ?
Now there’s a thought. How would he fare ? He’d probably ruffle a few feathers, but then blogs can be a rough medium.
In his radio broadcast entitled “Wales and the Artist” (broadcast 24th October 1949. BBC. Welsh Home Service. Produced by John Griffiths) Dylan Thomas offered some insights on the Welsh Artist. He certainly ruffled a few feathers in this broadcast.
By 1949 Dylan Thomas was a mature poet, and he had been working on his play Under Milk Wood for at least four years. He would continue to work on this play for another four years, until his early death in 1953.
Dylan Thomas writes :
“Too many of the artists of Wales who go to live permanently in, for example, London, begin almost at once to anglicize themselves beyond recognition (though this, of course, does not apply to artists alone [...])… They repudiate the Welsh language, whether they know it or not. By the condescending telling of comic apocryphal tales about Dai and Evan from the valleys, they earn, in the company of cultural lickspittles who condescend to them in their turn, sorry dinners and rounds of flat drinks… They confirm, by their spaniel aduration and their ignorance of the tradition that inevitably leads to the experiment, the suspicions of un-Welsh experimental artists that all the Welsh are humbugs, especially Welsh artists… They set up, in grey, whining London, a little mock Wales of their own, an exile government of dispossessed intellectuals dispossessed not of their country but of their intellects. And they return home, every long now and then, like slummers, airily to treat and backslap their grooved old friends, to inquire, half-laughingly, the whereabouts of streets and buildings as though they did not know them in the deepest dark, to drag, with all the magnets of their snobbery, the Christian names and numbers of wives of aged painters, the haunts of up-and-going poets, the intimate behaviour of the famous musicians whom they have not met, and to jingle in their pockets and mouths their foreign-made pennies, opinions, and intonations.
On the other hand, too many of the artists of Wales stay in Wales too long… rather than attempting to raise the standard of art of their own country by working fervently at their own words, paint, or music.
And too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the position of the artists of Wales.
There is only position for an artist anywhere : and that is, upright“
[Note : the ellipses have been added to shorten the text; the emphasis is ours]
Of course, Dylan Thomas would make a fine blogger-cum-poet and his advice and comments on artists sixty years ago rings true today for Welsh artists and bloggers!
Photographs : Dylan Thomas statue in Swansea Marina. 1984. Sculptor John Doubleday.
In Aberdare Town recently we met the ONE TRUE KING.
Elvis Preseli.
We fought our way bravely past the security guards, the groupies, the photographers, the masseuse, the PAs, the personal chefs …
We overcome the vast entourage that filled up Market Street in Aberdare seeking the one true king.
Our audience with the King was brief.
He curled his lips.
And he wiggled his hips
And said :
Easter Sunday 8th April. Aberdare Con Club. Be there, bach.
Crocuses are such conformists.
Today most of their purple ilk are in early flower and bursting through at Aberdare St Johns Church.
The dandy daffodils are the real rebels.
They seem to sense that St David’s Day March 1st is a few days away, and are holding back their display.
According to Ivor Morgan in his book St Elvan – Parish History and Churches (1995) the Church of St John dates from 1189 AD or earlier.
Eight centuries or more of history. What secrets and dramas can these Church stones tell about Aberdare ?
In March and April, the daffodils herald spring leading to summer.
And in May, the blossom on the trees at St Johns is one of the seasonal wonders of Aberdare.
Today we worship Mammon and the motor car, but when the oil age is over, the age of cheap and plentiful material things will also be over. The motor car will be consigned to history books. It was a brief phase of our history. When the din of these machines dies down perhaps we will we pay a little more attention to the dandy daffodils in our midst, rebel dandy daffodils brightening up the drab, grey grime of modernity.
From small acorns… this is one of the theatres where Frank Vickery honed his craft in the 1970s.
Aberdare Health Centre has been having some sort of a clear-out in the past few weeks.
Five of the resident doctors at the Health Centre retired on the same day in January 2007… it looks like the fresh faces are sprucing up their new offices!
Last week there was a nice metal filing cabinet destined for the dump. In today’s skip (see photo) there is an office desk in good condition.
It’s such a pity to see so many items of re-useable and re-cyclable furniture thrown away like this …
Four years ago saw the invasion of Iraq with the wholehearted support of the British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan and elsewhere, in an imperial war to secure oil supplies from conquered territories.
Since the invasion, the British Labour Government has attacked our freedom through arbitrary arrest, ID cards and many other measures.
A year ago, the Labour First Minister Rhodri Morgan refused to give his view on the Iraq War on the BBC Question Time programme.
In the May 2007 Welsh Assembly Election, Welsh voters have their opportunity to give their views on Rhodri Morgan and the Labour Party.
A montage of photos taken today in Commercial Street and Canon Street.
It is a depressing vision.
In parts it looks like a wasteland.
These streets are in the choicest retail district of Cynon Valley.
All the shops in the postcard have closed.
How can small shops compete against giant-sized corporations that encircle Aberdare like jungle beasts, pawing away at the easy prey in the centre ?
How long before some megalomaniac supermarket opens a ‘convenience store’ within Aberdare Town itself, to kill off even more of the retail landscape ?
Giant corporations – principally supermarkets – destroy choice and diversity in Aberdare. And in villages across the Valley, they destroy all forms of retail life. It is a ’scorched earth’ policy.
If you can buy a loaf of bread in your own village, you are lucky. Think about it. Many people in Cynon Valley have no local shopping facilities selling good quality nourishing food.
If Aberdare Town is a depressing dump, it is because we have let it become such a thing. By allowing our politicians to mis-represent our interests and gild the pockets of corporate capital, by tolerating the mendacity of the media who fawn at the feet of the rich and powerful, we have chosen to create this wasteland on our own doorstep.
Say No to a Trident Replacement!
On Saturday February 17th in Cardiff
Assemble 12.30pm at Cardiff City Hall, 1 p.m.
Invited speakers include: Julie Morgan MP; Dai Davies MP (People’s Voice); Jill Evans MEP, Chair CND Cymru; and a Church of Wales representative.
Why is it that Rhondda Cynon Taff Council can spend day after day manicuring the hedgerow and roadsides near Tesco’s controversial Aberdare store… but in the heart of Aberdare, they are unable to organise a lick of paint on one of their own buildings ?
Last year, the flower display in front of Aberdare Library appeared much too late and was as limp as a wet lettuce. For most of the year, the former fountain in front of the Library was a bowl of mud, in total contrast to the special treatment our Council offer corporate clients like Tesco.
Green Street in Aberdare should be the heart of Aberdare : Two majestic chapels, the ancient Church of St John’s on the doorstep, the Con Club across the road, our Town Library nearby. Green Street greets citizens, visitors and shoppers coming to Aberdare. It’s something to be proud of and it should entice people to stay.
There appears to be a new do-it-yourself land fill site in the Valley.
It is developing in Hirwaun Industrial Estate.
Is Hirwaun set to be become the next Nant-y-Gwyddon ?
See also
It can strike a man or woman with such force and come down sudden from heaven like the elements.
Snow, wind, or rain will not hold back the desire to dive for cast-off pearls and treasures.
In Cwmbach yesterday it struck in the snow – see the photograph.
Iraq For Sale Film
Thursday 15 February at 8 pm.
Chapter Arts Centre, Market Rd., Canton
Tickets available from Chapter box office.
Organised in association with Oyster Clothing.
The film will be introduced by poet, Robert Minhinnick, who will also show a short film about his recent visit to Iraq.
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Corporate Watch UK research and report on the corporate carve-up of Iraq.
February 9th 2007. Aberdare Commercial Street today, at the heart of the town’s shopping district on a Friday afternoon and you could count the number of shoppers on one or two hands, and maybe a toe or two.
Many shops in Aberdare Town could not receive their usual deliveries. Bread and milk was selling quickly in the few shops selling these basic items.
Some journalists like to drum false stories into our heads suggesting that taking time off work on a day like this is “bad”.
As if we had sinned against man and nature to withhold a day of our labour on one of the most unusual days of the year.
We are but human beings and creative ones too, and the urge to build snow men, throw snowballs, and skate down icy paths is a natural urge.
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty or more. Age is no barrier. Take your Zimmer out if necessary. Form a snowball with your hands, sculpt something with this wonderful stuff falling from the sky.
It’s shwmae Elvis time again and the Porthcawl Elvis Festival is gearing up for the main event over the weekend of 27-30 September this year.
To whet your appetites they’re holding the Festival Launch Party next
Thursday 15th February at the Hi Tide Inn in Porthcawl, starting at 7.30 PM.
There’s a host of top Elvis tribute artistes to entertain you, with one or two surprises too.
Tickets are just £6.00 each from the Hi Tide on 01656 782432.
To be kept informed of events leading up to the Elvis Festival, register on the website at www.elvies.co.uk
There was a little time early today to steal a few moments at Aberdare Park following the heavy snowfall last night.
The snow brings a silence that provokes a sense of awe in nature. It is at times eerie.
Snow dusted onto the trees and shrubs accentuates their shape for the eyes.
Walking underneath the trees and a flurry of snow slips down on one’s head. The trees are old like the hills but they retain a school-child’s sense of humour.
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More photographs of Aberdare Park in the snow …
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“Nature is silent save when the poets lend her a voice. As soon as man is alone in the fields, he is overwhelmed by this mysterious silence; not a breath, not a sound; if his foot strikes a root; if he coughs, the ocean of silence immediately closes over that flowing noise like the calm waves over a stone fallen in the water. Silence here below is not an interruption of sound, it is sound which interrupts silence; and silence absorbs it, as darkness absorbs the meagre flash of a rocket, or the vanishing track of a shooting star. Let us look at the firmament; let us contemplate it, if we dare, for an hour, lying on our back with our face turned towards the milky way, and we shall then understand this thought of “Pascal” which makes us shudder : “The eternal silence of infinite space frightens me!”
Assuredly, there are sounds in nature; the leaves rustle, the brook murmurs, the wind roars or moans, the thunder rumbles; but in all this there is no language; and though we listen, attentive or anxious, we do not hear the words of consolation or revealation, for which we long. ” – Wilfred Monod “Silence and Prayer” (Allenson, London, 1931). (Translated by Gladys A. Slade).
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