On Thursday 19th September 2009 between 7pm – 10pm.
There will be an open mic slot and refreshments will be provided.
Places are limited – please ring to book.
Telephone Cynon Valley Museum and Gallery on 01685 886729
Former Catatonia singer Cerys recorded the audio book which will be launched in Cardiff’s Borders bookstore on Saturday, 21st March, the first time she has undertaken such a project.
It’s only a matter of time before the police swoop on the publishers and confiscate all copies of Tracy’s Tits by Ponty author Amanda Weeks … so I thought I’d better blog a review here pretty sharp.
Tracy’s Tits is a collection of short stories by Amanda Weeks, a fresh and exciting new voice writing from Pontypridd, the second-most important South Wales Valleys town after Aberdare.
Free Patrick Jones poetry event tonight in Cwmaman…
When ? Thursday evening November 13th 2008 at 7pm.
Where ? At The Cwmaman Institute Lounge
What ? Poetry and verse
Who ? with Patrick Jones Mark Williams Emma Williams & Cosmo
Why ? Because YOU are worth it.
Photo : Miner by Robert Thomas, Queen Street, Cardiff.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s stay in the Elan Valley in 1811 and 1812 is commemorated by a sculpture in the grounds of the Elan Valley visitor centre.
Shelley stayed at Cwm Elan house for one of his stays at Elan Valley. There is a photo of this house in the Gathering the Jewels project, at http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/item1/19732
According to Powys Council’s website : “The drowned valleys of the rivers Elan and Claerwen each contained a large and historic country house linked with the lyric poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The estate of Cwm Elan, containing the Elan Valley mansion, was purchased in 1792 by Thomas Grove. It was described then as “10,000 worthless acres, which he is now converting into a paradise.” A local touring guide published in 1892, before the start of the dams project, noted that: …the Cwm Elan Estate was purchased early in the century by Mr Grove, a Wiltshire gentleman, and it is to his fostering care that a great part of its present luxuriant beauty is due.” This Wiltshire gentleman was Shelley’s uncle, and the poet, who came to stay at Cwm Elan on two occasions, was to become very attached to the rugged grandeur of the local landscape.
See the Full Set of Photos in the Gallery here
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.
The poet Harri Webb (1920-1994) spent twenty years living in Cwmbach in Cynon Valley. Today we could only spare twenty minutes in this Welsh village to reflect on the man and his work.
For a few of those minutes we stopped and stared from the Cwmbach hill and looked out towards the area of land they call Tirfounder Fields. The heart is being robbed from this land as the trees are ripped from the earth for a new housing development.
Hundreds of mature trees have been removed, simplifying the local environment in preparation for man and his machines to lay the concrete, the asphalt and the other toxic materials.
Harri Webb remembers the trees and birds in his poem “The Woods of Cynon” thus :
Aberdare, Llanwynno, all
Merthyr and Llanfabon,
The worst thing ever to befall
Was cutting the woods of Cynon.
They cut down many a parlour sweet
So pleasant with the sun on,
Places where men and boys would meet
In the forest of Glyn Cynon.
If a man had to take flight
From vengeance of the alien
He’d get a lodging for the night
With the nightingales of Cynon.
Many a birch tree in green attire
(Hanged high be every Saxon)
Is heaped as fuel for the fire
By the black men of iron.
For cutting down and making bare
The wild birds’ resting place
May confusion be the share
Of the false English race.
Better should the English be
Hanged in the depths of ocean
In hell to dwell in misery
For cutting the woods of Cynon.
I heard them saying yesterday
The parish is now so dreary
All the red deer have gone away
To the black wood of Mawddwy.
Hunting the badger and the hind
And the roebuck in the dell
All that is now behind
For Cynon Woods are felled.
If a stag was in the chase
Before the huntsman running
You’d never see him slack his pace
Till he reached the woods of Cynon.
If a girl came, fairest fair,
Beside the river strolling,
Pleasant it was to met her there
Down in the woods of Cynon.
And if they seek as in old days
For wood to bridge the river
Or build a church or a dwelling place
Glyn Cynon is no giver.
In judgement I’d set up a court
Of every honest fowl
And in his robes of office there
Their hangmen be the owl.
If anybody asks who made
This cruel declaration,
It’s one who often met his maid
In the forest of Glyn Cynon.
* from the Welsh of an anonymous poet (17th century).
Harri Webb, Collected Poems. Edited by Meic Stephens (Gomer, Llandysul 1995). ISBN 1 85902 299 5
