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An Interview with Jim Perrin, author of 'Snowdon' - The Biography Of A Mountain
By AmeriCymru, 2016-07-08
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From the Wikipedia :- "Born Ernest James Perrin in Manchester, he has lived in Wales, England and France on occasions, from where he contributed to the Guardian Country Diary. Before turning to writing, he worked in Cwm pennant as a shepherd. As a writer, he has made regular contributions to a number of newspapers and climbing magazines. As a climber, he has developed new routes, as well as making solo ascents of a number of established routes."
AmeriCymru spoke to Jim about his new book Snowdon: The Story of a Welsh Mountain'
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AmeriCymru: It is evident from your book that you have visited Snowdon on many occasions. How would you describe your relationship with the mountain?
Jim: Long-standing, intimate and passionate – also a marriage of mind as well as body. There are so many dimensions to the mountain that I find fascinating. And it is, of course, extraordinarily beautiful.
AmeriCymru: Care to describe your book ''Snowdon'' for our readers? What inspired you to write it?
Jim: In a sense it’s a biography of the mountain, in that there’s an element of recounting chronological “life” story. It’s highly discursive, certainly not a guidebook, and it tries to explain and depict as many elements relevant to the mountain as possible within the relatively short space of 240 pages – from geology, physical form and folklore through to its importance as contemporary recreational focus.
AmeriCymru: In your book you explain that Snowdon is a special mountain for the Welsh. In what sense has it been special historically?
Jim: The highest point of any nation always has significance – mythically, oropolitically. Think of your own Mount Whitney in the contiguous states. To the Welsh, Eryri – the mountainous region around Snowdon – has long been a cultural and linguistic heartland. In earlier times it was the chief resistant region against the English colonists – think of Gwynedd, where Eryri’s to be found, as a Helmand province of its time. This is why Edward 1 made such a point of holding a feast on Snowdon summit in 1284, after the defeat of Llew Olaf and the execution of his brother Dafydd. The line of Gwynedd destroyed, or so he thought, to appropriate their most potent physical symbol was crucial to his imperial aspirations. But since you can never conquer a mountain, Snowdon (the Saxon name curiously appears to be older than any extant Welsh one) emerged from the cloud it had been put under by Edward’s militarism and somehow grew into a resistant symbol of Welsh nationhood.
AmeriCymru: Can you tell us a little more about the folklore surrounding the mountain?
Jim: There isn’t another mountain in Britain that has so rich and various a folklore, from abounding tales of the faery folk that perhaps have their origin in some collective-unconscious memory of encounters with an older race of inhabitants here as Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages overlapped and succeeded each other, to the wealth of association with what became known, after it had migrated to early-medieval Europe, as “The Matter of Britain”. These were the stories centring around Arthur and Merlin that Sir Thomas Malory codified in Le Morte Darthur (excuse Malory’s French!). It seems highly likely that their early emergence had some connection with the Snowdon region, where they locate very precisely at certain sites like Dinas Emrys in Nant Gwynen (the name of which was changed by a later generation of colonialists, the English Ordnance Survey, to that tautological abomination “Nant Gwynant”, as which it remains on maps to the present day).
AmeriCymru: Which of the six best known paths to the summit do you prefer? Which would you recommend to the first time visitor?
Jim: My recommendation as a relatively straightforward introduction would be for a circuit, taking the Snowdon Ranger path from Cwellyn in ascent, which is long and easy and takes you over the crest of Snowdon’s finest cliff, Clogwyn Du’r Arddu, and then following the Bwlch Main ridge in descent, which leads you down to Rhyd Ddu, only a short step from your starting point, and gives you the best views out west to beautiful lesser hills along the Lleyn Peninsula, with a sea at either hand. Both routes are replete with association from the early literature of the mountain – Thomas Johnson, Pennant, Coleridge, Wordsworth and so on.
AmeriCymru: Where in your opinion is the most satisfying rock climbing to be found on Snowdon?
Jim: No problem answering that! Clogwyn Du’r Arddu on the northern flank is by common consent the finest cliff in Britain, the rock-climbing on it magnificently characterful and varied. But high, serious, technical, and not a place where beginners are advised to try their hand too immediately!
AmeriCymru: In your chapter ''The starting Of The Wild Idea'' there are a number of excerpts from accounts of visits to Snowdon. How prominent a role did Snowdon play in the 18th century revival of interest in the ''sublime of nature''?
Jim: It provided a perfect paradigm for Burke’s hugely influential aesthetics essay of 1757, “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” , which underpinned the Romantic movement that welled up towards the end of the Eighteenth Century. All the early travellers here saw it thus – Pennant and Wordsworth, who borrowed from him in true Cambridge copyist tradition, particularly. With the increasing difficulties involved in continental travel during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, Snowdon’s relative accessibility made the mountain very fashionable indeed.
AmeriCymru: Where can people go online to buy ''Snowdon''?
Jim: The book’s published by one of the great Welsh institutions, Gwasg Gomer of Llandysul, and a fabulous job they’ve done too on the production and design, from the handmade Italian endpapers to the exquisite Sion Ilar cover illustration. So buying it direct from Gomer seems a good way to keep the faith www.gomer.co.uk/
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Jim Perrin?
Jim: My next book’s already out, as of March 2013 – it’s called Shipton and Tilman: The Great Decade of Himalayan Exploration (Hutchinson, £25), and is about the quirky 1930s friendship between the two men who, venturesome eco-conscious ragamuffins that they were, became the model and ideal for ethical mountain activity thereafter. Of all my books, it’s the one I’ve most enjoyed writing! I wanted to call it “The Spies Who Invented the Yeti” (they were, and they did), but the publishers thought best to play straight. At the moment I’m working on a collection of stories – my first attempt at fiction. It’s due out from the little Welsh publishing house of Cinnamon Press in the fall of 2013 under the title of A Snow Goose and other stories . Next after that is a critical biography of the major Victorian miscellaneous prose writer George Borrow, who’ll be known to AmeriCymru followers as the author of Wild Wales – the best book of travel ever published about any part of the British Isles, and one of the strangest too.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Jim: “Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parking meters”, and get your asses over to Wales asap to see what Snowdon’s like for yourselves. Pick up on the clues in my book, though, on how to stay away from the crowds, and study the O.S. 1:25,000 map very carefully, even though it is a product of the English military establishment. See you there among the clouds!
A striking new book giving a taste of fifty exceptional cafes in Wales has been published.
Caffis Cymru by Lowri Haf Cooke will be launched on 9 July at Gŵyl Arall / Another Festival, Caernarfon and 16 July at Sesiwn Fawr, Dolgellau.
Across Wales there’s a wealth of cosy, cool and quirky cafes to suit everyone’s tastes. Behind every teapot and cafetière there’s a treasury of personal stories, anecdotes and snippets of local history.
Lowri Haf Cooke says “Welsh cafes in their various guises have been meeting points and great social hotspots for many years. From the 18th and 19th century coffee houses to the Victorian tea rooms,from the Bracchi cafes to the Milk bars (established in Colwyn Bay in 1933), they’ve all played an important part in Wales’s social history….”
“By the turn of the millenium, a number of local cafes were usurped by the high street giants. But there has been a new trend in recent years as we turn back to independent cafes, tearooms and artisan coffee. And as I discovered on my travels, there’s a new cross-pollination too – the caférestaurant-deli-bakery-bar.”
Lowri says, “Whichever café you enjoy visiting at the moment, you’re sure to discover a new favourite in this book, Caffis Cymru . This is a book for everyone, and at the end of the day you don’t need to spend a fortune to enjoy yourself in one of these cafes. So, reach for a cuppa, sit back, relax and arrange your own whistle-stop tour of cafes in Wales!”
Caffis Cymru will be available at your local bookshop for £6.99 or directly from the publisher Gomer Press on www.gomer.co.uk
Lowri Haf Cooke will be launching her new book at:
Gŵyl Arall / Another Festival, Caernarfon
Saturday, 9 July at 11.30am. Tickets: £4. For more information go to www.gwylarall.com
Sesiwn Fawr, Dolgellau
Saturday, 16 July at 4pm at T.H.Roberts Café. For more information go to www.sesiwnfawr.cymru
Bibliographical details
Caffis Cymru by Lowri Haf Cooke
Photographs: Emyr Young
ISBN 9781785620690 Publisher: Gomer Press
paperback 152 pages £6.99
Dr Jonathan Hicks is the Headteacher of St Cyres Comprehensive School in Penarth. He began his career as an English teacher and has taught in four secondary schools. Married with three sons, one of whom is also a teacher, he is a longstanding supporter of Cardiff City F.C. He is the author of four books on military history: ‘A Solemn Mockery’ on the myths of the Anglo-Zulu War, which in 2006 won the Victorian Military Society’s top award; ‘Strange Hells’ which told the story of his great uncle’s service at Gallipoli and on the Western Front during the Great War. He has also written on his hometown’s military past in the 2007 book ‘Barry and the Great War’ – an illustrated account of the part that Barrians played in that conflict, a lecture on which won the Western Front Association Shield in 2010. In 2008 he wrote an illustrated account on the role Barrians played in WW2 - ‘Barry and the Second World War’. AmeriCymru spoke to Jonathan about his first novel The Dead of Mametz
Jonathan: I met a fellow military historian in a pub in Swansea about ten years ago. He told me all about the battle for Mametz Wood as I had never heard the story before. I visited the location with my family in 2004. It was a bright, sunny day as we made our way past the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery towards the wood. Quite suddenly the clouds gathered overhead and there was a rumble of thunder. Being a teacher, I told my three sons to stand still, close their eyes and imagine what it must have been like when the battle commenced. With that, a bolt of lightning flashed and it was all too much for my youngest who ran back to the car! Since that strange, ethereal moment Mametz Wood has always held a fascination for me.
Americymru: Members of the Western Front Association have described "The Dead of Mametz" as: ‘... a great mix of an intriguing storyline and superb historical detail.’ How did you go about researching the historical background for the book?
Jonathan: I was a brought up on Hollywood’s version of the Second World War – John Wayne and Audie Murphy films. All I knew about WW1 was the black and white films of men moving far too quickly (because of the film speed) through oceans of mud. But as I grew older I became more interested in finding out about WW1. I spent several years in the middle of the last decade gathering the stories of the men and women from my hometown, Barry, who served during the Great War. I then wrote a book entitled ‘Barry and the Great War’ which contained photographs, newspaper accounts and memories of their service. I also held two exhibitions to raise funds to restore our local memorial.
Americymru: What were the Military Police and what was their role during WWI?
Jonathan: At the start of the War the Military Police was a comparatively small force of just 3 officers and 761 men. By the end of the War this number had risen to over 15000. In France their role mainly included the manning of ''stragglers'' posts'', traffic control, dealing with crime committed by British soldiers, the control of civilians within the battle area, handling prisoners of war and patrolling rear areas and ports. Walking wounded from Regimental Aid Posts were directed to casualty collecting stations for evacuation, and ''stragglers'' were dealt with. This last-named duty involved halting soldiers who were obviously neither casualties, signallers or runners, re-arming and equipping them if necessary, and sending them forward to rejoin their units, individually or in groups.
Americymru: What investigatory tools were available to the Military Police at that time in history? How might a murder investigation at that time be different from today and more difficult?
Jonathan: Information on the Military Police during the Great War is scant. It is, for example, not even certain which cap badge they wore. As part of my research I visited the museum of the Military Police and spent time with the curator who was able to help me with some additional information. A murder investigation of the time would have lacked all of the sophisticated tools and technology that is currently employed at a crime scene, but my detective relies on his experience and deduction to solve the murder.
Americymru: In your research, were you able to find records of actual homicide cases investigated by the Military Police?
Jonathan: Actually the homicide case that I based the novel on was one I found in the service record of a local soldier. He had indeed shot two of his colleagues but I changed the motive for the killing in my novel as well as regiments, dates and names.
Americymru: Are you working on another novel?
Jonathan: The second novel in the series is virtually complete and will be published next Spring. This time events are set at Gallipoli in 1915 and at Passchendaele in the summer of 1917, as well as in south Wales. I have the plot for the third in the series sketched out and will be commencing work on it this summer.
Americymru: Who do you read for pleasure or inspiration? Any recommendations?
Jonathan: To give me the background knowledge that enables me to write on the period, I read factual accounts of the Great War, memoirs and articles on militaria. For pleasure I also read the great contemporary American crime thriller writers – Jeffrey Deaver, Harlan Coben and Robert Crais.
Americymru: Where can our readers go to purchase your book online?
Jonathan: ‘The Dead of Mametz’ can be purchased through Amazon or Waterstones, as well as all good bookshops.
Americymru: You are a long standing supporter of Cardiff F.C. Do you think they''ll ever make it to the Premier League?
Jonathan: I hope so! I have never seen Cardiff play in the top division in my lifetime, although I did attend their three recent visits to Wembley Stadium. My grandparents went to the 1927 FA Cup Final at Wembley when we beat Arsenal to win the cup. My mother was born exactly nine months later….
Americymru: Any final comment for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Jonathan: I am thrilled at having my first novel published by Y Lolfa and the reviews on Amazon and Waterstones have been very complimentary. I hope that people of Welsh descent who live in America will enjoy the novel and its portrayal of the lives of working people in south Wales at the start of the last century and make them think of the principality. I hope they will also think of the novel the next time they pass a war memorial and as they read the list of names, remember that those men and women once had dreams and hopes for the future.
Jonathan Hicks titles on Y Lolfa and Amazon
Reviews and Interviews on other sites:
Marking The Centenary Of The Battle Of Mametz Wood 1916 With Previously Unpublished Material
By AmeriCymru, 2016-07-08
THE WELSH AT MAMETZ WOOD, THE SOMME 1916
‘The Welsh at Mametz Wood, The Somme 1916’ by Jonathan Hicks is a brand new interpretation of the First World War battle for Mametz Wood, telling the story of those terrible days from the viewpoint of soldiers who were actually there.
Using material from his extensive research, as well as sources translated from the original Welsh and the memories left behind by German survivors - many unpublished in English before – Jonathan Hicks gives a fresh insight into the battle.
Drawing extensively on survivors’ accounts and original photographs, the author allows the soldiers to speak for themselves to tell the full story of those dark days. In the words of one soldier: ‘Hell cannot be much worse.’
The 38th (Welsh) Division began the attack on Mametz Wood on the 7 th of July 1916 – the second week of the Battle of the Somme. The division was a citizen force composed of miners from the Rhondda, farmers from Caernarfon and Anglesey, coal trimmers from the docks at Barry and Cardiff, bank workers from Swansea and men from a whole host of other backgrounds and occupations from the counties of Wales.
‘All hell broke loose as machine guns opened up on us from the front and from the flank. We stood no chance and the boys were everywhere falling, but we kept moving forward,’ wrote Private Albert Evans, 16th (Cardiff City) Battalion of The Welsh Regiment.
When it was over, Field Marshal Haig did not consider the performance of the 38th (Welsh) Division at Mametz Wood to be a success, but the fact remains that after days of ferocious hand-to-hand fighting with an enemy from the most effective army in Europe at that time, and terrible loss of life, the division finally succeeded in capturing the largest wood on the Somme.
There were some 4,000 British casualties during the battle.
The book’s publication follows the opening of the new ‘War’s Hell’ exhibition at the National Museum in Cardiff which is an exhibition of paintings, poetry and artefacts associated with the Welsh soldiers at Mametz Wood.
Dr Jonathan Hicks is an award-winning military historian and novelist, and his meticulous research provides new insight into this famous battle. He has previously won the Victorian Military Society’s top award for his work on the Anglo-Zulu War and in 2010 he was awarded the Western Front Association Shield for his work on Barry and the Great War.
Jonathan is also a member of the First World War Programme Board which advises the Welsh Government on the centenary commemorations.
He has previously written novels on the battle at Mametz Wood, including ‘The Dead of Mametz’ and ‘Demons Walk Among Us’.
He has dedicated his book to the fallen and writes:
‘I dedicate this book to the men who fought there in the second week of July 1916, those who died and who were buried in France, and those who are still missing with no known grave.’
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A Story Of Survival, Love And Community In One Of Britain's Worst Disasters.
Following days of bad weather, water from a spring had destabilized a huge coal slag tip – one of the black man-made mountains which surrounded the village. Thousands of tonnes of coal tip waste slid down a mountainside and devastated the mining village of Aberfan. The black mass crashed through the local school, where pupils were celebrating the last day of term.
One hundred and forty-four people were killed. One hundred and sixteen were schoolchildren. Gaynor Madgwick was there. She was eight years old and severely injured. Her brother and sister were in classrooms either side of her. Both died.
Recalling the horrific event in a diary four years later , Gaynor wrote,
‘I heard a terrible, terrible sound, a rumbling sound. It was so loud. I just didn’t know what it was. It seemed like the school went numb, you could hear a pin drop. I was suddenly petrified and glued to the chair. It sounded like the end of the world had come.’
In Aberfan – A Story of Survival, Love and Community in One Of Britain’s Worst Disasters , Gaynor tells her own story and interviews people affected by that day – from the bereaved and the rescuers, to the police and royalty. She explores the nature of courage, grief and faith, to create both a moving personal story of one family’s pain and a definitive account of the events that shook the nation and the world.
‘For the past 50 years I have lived as a sort of prisoner or victim of my past. Now I am trying to break free.’ said Gaynor. ‘I started this book by looking again at the writings of my young self. I’ve tried to explore the determination, courage and resilience which got me through. Then, I set out on a journey, to find those same qualities in my community, to see how it had coped, survived and often thrived.’
The Earl of Snowdon – who was there hours after the disaster – described it as ‘ one of the most moving experiences of my life.’
‘Gaynor Madgwick’s book, Aberfan , is a brave, heartbreaking and inspiring journey in which she re-visits the story of what happened to her and to the whole community of Aberfan on that dreadful day.’ he said. ‘It is a book that should be read by all of us in memory of those who died and those who survived.’
Said Broadcaster Vincent Kane,
‘Gaynor Madgwick was pulled injured from one of the classrooms where her friends died. She was left behind to live out her life. This is her story, sad, sweet, sentimental, and authentic. I commend it to you.’
‘October 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of that awful day. For 50 years we have been trying to recover from the Aberfan disaster. It’s a long road, and we take it one day at a time.’ said Gaynor.
‘I’ve tried to tell this story in a way in which it has never been told before, beginning by reliving Aberfan through the eyes of a survivor. As a survivor, now 58 years old, I have been haunted by the memories of the Aberfan disaster.’she continued ‘I wanted to create the fullest picture of the disaster and its aftermath while people were still around to tell their story.’
‘For me, I can’t start the next chapter of my life if I keep rereading the last one; this book will help me move on. My hope is that it will help others move on too.’
Aberfan - A Story of Survival, Love and Community in One of Britain's Worst Disasters by Gaynor Madgwick (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
Aberfan will be launched at Ynysowen Community Primary School in Aberfan, Merthyr Tydfil at 6pm on Wednesday the 13 th of July in the company of Vincent Kane (OBE), Iain Mclean (FBA, FRSE), Greg Lewis, Gaynor Madgwick, Melanie Doel, and Ynysowen Male Voice Choir.
A press conference with Gaynor Madgwick will be held prior to the launch at the school between 4.00pm and 5.00pm which the press are encouraged to attend.
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Sam Adams comes from Gilfach Goch, Glamorgan and is a former editor of Poetry Wales and a former chairman of the English-language section of Yr Academi Gymreig. He edited the Collected Poems and Collected Stories of Roland Mathias, is the author of three monographs in the ‘Writers of Wales’ series and is a frequent contributor of poems, criticism and essays to a number of magazines. He published his third collection of poems, Missed Chances in 2007.
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Sam: Let me say first that I am delighted to be given this opportunity by AmeriCymru/Welsh American Bookstore, to talk about the novel, and its subject, the historical Thomas Prichard, who still fascinates me.
But to answer your question: much of Prichard’s Nose is, I suppose, an old-fashioned picaresque novel, written in an approximation of nineteenth-century style, because Prichard is supposed to be writing an account of his own life. Readers will find the ‘autobiographical’ chapters begin with the sort of summary of their contents that you often find in nineteenth-century books. His story opens on a small farmhouse high on a ridge overlooking the River Usk in Breconshire, where he has come with his mother as an infant. The scandalous event that brought them there gradually emerges during the story. He describes his boyhood on and in the neighbourhood of the farm, his education at the home of a wealthy great-uncle in a nearby village, and his bitterness at the discovery that this relative has no intention of helping him any further. Having learned his father left him and his mother to join a brother in London, he determines to go to the great city and find him. He journeys there on foot, with a company of drovers driving a herd of cattle across England to a sale for the London market, where he says goodbye to his companions and makes his way alone to the last known address of his father. There his uncle takes him in, for his father is dead. His adventures in London begin quietly enough when his uncle obtains for him an apprenticeship in a firm of accountants, but an interest in all kinds of theatrical entertainments and a chance meeting with a group of actors lead to his being engaged at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, under the management of the famous Shakespearian actor Philip Kemble. Although he gains some modest success on the stage, he realises he will never be given a leading role and his ambition turns in another direction: he will become a writer. At the end of his account he has a book of poems on Welsh subjects that he plans to sell in Wales.
In parallel with Prichard’s autobiography, the novel tells the story of Martin, a hapless, lonely young man, who also harbours the ambition to be a writer, and has taken on the task of researching Prichard. He begins grudgingly but finds himself drawn into the pursuit of this actor, known as ‘Mr Jefferies’, and (poor) poet with the pen name ‘Jeffery Llewelyn’, who was the first to write a book about Twm Sion Catti, and who somehow lost his nose. Martin finds the manuscript of Prichard’s story, which has long lain neglected in a library, and, to his utter confusion, that another researcher, the cleverer, more confident Rachel, has beaten him to this discovery. They meet and Martin, on the rebound from a brief disastrous marriage, falls for Rachel. Their doomed relationship is conducted by correspondence, the letters serving also to explore Prichard’s later life.
The book operates in two time frames, one in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and the other in the last quarter of the twentieth (but before mobile phones and email simplified and speeded contact between people), and the style varies accordingly. The last section of the book, as I have already indicated, is written in the epistolary manner, another old-fashioned approach to story telling, though one still quite often used.
AmeriCymru: How did you first become interested in Thomas Prichard?
Sam: I did not even recognise the name on that day in 1972 when, in the course of a visit to his home in Brecon, Roland Mathias said ‘Why don’t you write something about T J Llewelyn Prichard – the man who wrote Twm Sion Catti? As editor of the Anglo-Welsh Review, the outstanding journal of literature and the arts in Wales at the time, Roland was keen to fill gaps in the history of Welsh writing in English, and to encourage young writers, a category for which I just about qualified at the time. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
My first stop was the Y Bywgraffiadur Cymreig, the Dictionary of Welsh Biography. The brief Prichard entry told me very little and, as I soon discovered, was inaccurate. It said he was born in Trallong, a hamlet in Breconshire. He wasn’t. It said he married Naomi Jones of Builth. No, he married Naomi James, and she came from Hereford. It was partly right in saying he died in poverty in Swansea in 1875 or 1876, when actually he was rescued from abject poverty by the Samaritan actions of good citizens of Swansea shortly before he died, more than a decade earlier, in January 1862. It said he was buried in Tabernacle Graveyard in the heart of Swansea. That, too, was wrong: he was tumbled into a paupers’ grave, which he shares with several others, in Dan-y-Graig Cemetery on the eastern outskirts of Swansea, and you cannot find the precise location now since scrap-metal thieves have stolen the small, numbered cast-iron marker that formerly identified it.
There were clues to follow up in DWB: for example, the entry mentions his having acted in plays in Brecon and Aberystwyth, and his employment for a time by Lady Llanover. However, the verifiable facts I discovered about Prichard I owe to a lot of reading, leg work and luck, and those wonderful storehouses of knowledge, public libraries, especially in Cardiff and Swansea, and the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth. In Cardiff library I read all that Prichard wrote, some of it, especially the poetry, an uphill struggle, but Twm Sion Catti, unsophisticated as it is, was well worth the effort; and at Swansea, in the great bound volumes of the broadsheet Cambrian newspaper, I found the sad and moving facts of his final days. He died as a result of falling into his own fire, as the report of the inquest describes at length.
There was also the account (published in a journal called Cymry Fu) by Charles Wilkins, postmaster of Merthyr Tudful, of meeting Prichard at a dramatic performance in the town in 1857, when, in his late sixties, he was still wandering around Wales trying to sell copies of his Heroines of Welsh History, perhaps the first feminist take on historical studies. Wilkins describes a gaunt old man with a wax nose held in place by his spectacles, who spoke with ‘an earnest snuffle’ about great days acting in London’s top theatres.
It was no wonder that barely half way through gathering evidence for the article I had promised I would write for Roland Mathias, my subject had become an obsession. I continued to research Prichard, off and on, for more than thirty years, and at the end was still dissatisfied. I knew that, no matter how long I kept digging, I would be unable to find answers to all the questions that nagged at me. That was when I had the idea of writing a novel, which would allow me to use my imagination to fill the gaps in Prichard’s life story that another lifetime of research could not possibly bridge.
Twm Sion Cati''s cave, near Llanymddyfri
AmeriCymru: Can you tell us a little about Twm Sion Catti for the benefit of American readers?
Sam: Prichard’s book Twm Sion Catti, published in Aberystwyth at his own expense in 1828, is littered with anachronisms and not even faintly historical. It is based on folk tales, embroideries on far distant facts passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, until gathered in chapbooks sometime in the eighteenth century and sold by fair-day hawkers. I am fairly confident this was Prichard’s source material. To it he added another, thicker layer of embroidery. That the book was a commercial success, his only commercial success, we gather from the existence of pirated editions. Hoping to cash in again, he published a considerably expanded version in 1839 and, among the papers left when he died, was a third, further enlarged, text, which was published posthumously in 1873. There have been dozens of versions since, a few in comic book form, all owing something to Prichard’s original.
The historical Twm Sion Catti was more properly Thomas Jones, born about 1530, the illegitimate son of a Cardiganshire landowner, who lived at Fountain Gate near Tregaron. The name by which he is familiarly known derives from a combination of the names of his father and his mother: he was Thomas, or Twm, the son of John (Sion) and Catti (Catherine). He was formally pardoned by the highest court in the land in 1559, at the time of Elizabeth I, though of what is not clear. Perhaps before he settled down he had been the madcap witty reprobate and outlaw that we find in the folk tales. He became a man of substance – a landowner in succession to his father, an antiquary, genealogist and bard, whose manuscripts, dating from about 1570, may be consulted at the National Library. His wealthy second wife, whom he married in 1607, was Joan, widow of Thomas Williams of Ystrad-ffin and daughter of Sir John Price of Brecon Priory, but he did not have long to enjoy the marriage: he died in 1609.
AmeriCymru: Where can people go to buy Prichard’s Nose on line.
Sam: The book was published by Y Lolfa in 2010. It is available as a paperback from Amazon and it can be downloaded as a Kindle book.
AmeriCymru: You are also a poet. Care to tell us a little about your poetry?
Sam: When I started out as a writer I thought of myself as a poet. Although I have written a great deal of prose in recent years, notably in a long and continuing series of ‘Letters from Wales’ for the Carcanet Press magazine PN Review (which I know is available in the USA), I still get a special feeling when I write a poem that other people enjoy. My early poetry was chiefly about Gilfach Goch, where I was born, the place and its characters, and while I still turn to those close-to-home subjects from time to time, I now draw on a far wider range of times, themes, people and places. My poems have been published in all the leading magazines of Wales, elsewhere in the UK and overseas. I have published three books of poems, the latest, Missed Chances, from Y Lolfa in 2007, is available from Google Books, Amazon and Abe Books.
Better than trying to describe the kind of poems I write, perhaps I should just give you a sample. The first is a childhood memory from World War II, the second a kind of extended metaphor, and the third comes from visiting the rooms in Rome, just alongside the Spanish Steps, where the artist Joseph Severn was nursing his friend John Keats in his final illness.
Bomb on Gilfach
Not meant to be the target, we copped a stray.
When Swansea burned and set the sky alight,
Some German aircraft, limping loaded from the fray,
Fleeing shattered streets, dismembered dead,
Droned on and onwards through a moonless night.
The pilot, frantic for a fix, and the valleys'' spread
Fingers black on black beneath, said
''Drop the poxy thing, we''re losing height''.
A bomb fell in the night and no one died.
The news arrived as fat bacon fried
For breakfast with yesterday''s damped bread:
The doctor''s surgery was smashed, they said,
The old man, wrapped in wool and flannelette,
Descended safe abed through splintered planks
To the floor below. The windows of the church were blank;
Entire its slated roof had shifted
As if a clumsy hand had lifted
And once more, at an angle, set
It down. The war had come to seek us out
And we had slept. Some evil Nazi lout
Had dropped a bomb a few yards from our door
And no one heard. But all our nights were full
Of lumbering drams, the thump and roar
Of engines, infernal rattles as the coal was screened.
We would start to wakefulness if a lull
Occurred and somehow silence supervened.
Behind the skew-whiff church and silenced bell,
On a rushy patch of moss and water seep,
A vast inverted cone of mud struck deep
Into the hill. The frogs had been through hell.
We searched and fought for jagged shards
Of bomb, swapping spares for sets of cards
Or stamps – and watched them rust on windowsills;
Most wonderful, the doctor''s cellar door, blown down,
Disclosed his scattered packs of bandages and pills,
And, lustrous in the sunlight, carboys, blue and brown.
Kite Flying
On days of noisy wind that combs
The rippling grasses this way and that
As it passes, and tugs at clothes
With sly unbuttoning fingers
And takes the breath away, I think
How we would lie in some drowned hollow
While the slow kite wriggled in its stream.
How sad that some boys never learn
To fly a kite. I thought that I
Should never get it right – perhaps
I had made my cross to rigid,
Perhaps my paste and paper were too frail.
We knew those moments when the breeze
Would fail our fledgling project
And the taut held line would sag,
But we launched out sweetly on the air
Again and cast off twine enough
To let our hobby climb and climb.
...
At the Spanish Steps
February again, late afternoon:
Black fingers tilt
The fountain''s silver, quick
In its marble spoon.
Sun stripes spilt
From a shadowed alley
Across the cobbled square
Will not linger there.
Darkness follows soon.
Severn, sentry in the march
Of life, saw the fountain,
Like a foundered boat, lurch
At its mooring. Light ebbing,
Descended the steep stair, ran
One thirty steps across the square, sobbing,
To the trattoria,
Bought supper for a dying man.
Six sentry paces past the narrow cot,
Two at the blank wall,
Six paces back, turn,
Three at the tall,
Shuttered windows. Look down:
There in the marble hull,
Like blood, the waters for a moment burn.
After the death mask,
The scissored curl of auburn hair,
After the bonfire, the sickbed burned to ash,
After the vengeful smash
Of unflawed pots, the room waits,
Still at last, stripped bare.
And troupes of lovers pass
To climb the steps and meet
With others going down, or pause
To sit and lean together, close.
Water in the wallowing boat
Catches a gleam, holds it afloat.
Like Severn, I see the sun''s snail track
Recede across the water''s black,
Walk six paces back.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Sam: I greatly appreciate the opportunity you have given me of meeting members and readers of AmeriCymru and telling them something about my writing. Of course I hope they enjoy it, and if reading this raises further questions I would be glad to attempt to answer them. Dylan Thomas, R S Thomas, Roland Mathias and others, are I know well remembered, but it is quite wonderful that an interest in Wales and things Welsh, particularly the work of living authors, is alive and well in the USA, thanks to the care of and enthusiasm generated by AmeriCymru.
The influence of popular Anglo-American culture is what drives author Jon Gower’s latest newly-published volume of short stories.
Rebel Rebel by Jon Gower is a collection of 21 short stories taking place all around the world, whilst introducing the reader to fictional and historical characters in believable and fantastic scenarios.
‘The literature of the United States, particularly novels, have had a big influence on me since I was a child – especially my hero John Updike and other giants such as Saul Bellow and Cormac McCarthy.’ says Jon Gower.
‘Later on I came to know the works of great authors such as Annie Proulx and Lorrie Moore and the love affair continues to this day.’ he continued.
His inspiration of combining popular Anglo-American culture with the Welsh short story came from various American authors – including Ernest Hemingway.
‘Some of these short stories I owe to Ernest Hemingway. One in particular tries to emulate his feat of writing a short story in only a handful of words,’ says Jon. ‘I was inspired by other authors too, especially contemporary American authors who write short stories – such as Wells Tower and Christopher Coake.’
But it was not just from authors that Jon was inspired and he is indebted to one artist in particular for his influence on him.
‘I had not realised just how great David Bowie’s influence was on me until he died, and the emptiness and the loss proved just how much that man was present in my life before then,’ Jon explained.
‘One of the most wonderful things about him was his latest and last work – his art blossoming even as he slipped deeper into illness. I had to include a new story to try and convey the greatness of his last album – a masterpiece he created despite the cancer, and in doing so succeded in creating an original and powerful piece to the every end.’
‘Jon takes us all over the world, to share the lustful secrets of David Bowie and Mick Jagger, to searching for a submarine from North Korea, to seeing the leader of the only extremist organisation left in Wales painting his toenails red in the colour ‘Coral Explosion,’ says Catrin Beard.
‘He wields the talent of Ellis Wynne as he provokes and satirises, and uses his vast knowledge of the films, literature, popular music and geography of America,’ added Manon Rhys.
Jon Gower writes in Welsh and in English, and has since written a vast array of books including Y Storïwr (Book of the Year 2012), Norte and The Story of Wales . Rebel Rebel is his fourth volume of short stories.
Rebel Rebel by Jon Gower (£7.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
Dr. Karl Jenkins is one of Britain's greatest and most versatile living composers, the author of an ocean of amazing and exalting music unlimited by genre, style or instrument. He holds a doctorate of musicology from the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Music London. His many awards include several fellowships at various universities and an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for "services to music." He has composed for jazz bands, orchestra and voice, for advertising, film, and live performance. Dr. Jenkins is a native of the village of Penclawdd in the Gower peninsula, where his father was a school teacher and the choirmaster and organist of the Methodist church the family attended.
Two of his most recent works are Stabat Mater (2008), an adaptation of a 13th century Roman Catholic prayer and Stella Notalis (2009), adaptations and compositions of Christmas carols from around the world.
Americymru: You'll be appearing as guest conductor at Carnegie Hall on March 6th . What are the circumstances and what will you be conducting?
Karl: As part of Welsh Week I've been asked to conduct some of my music as the first half of the concert. I have a strong relationship with Jonathan Griffith of DCINY who has arranged the event and who has been fantastic in that he has conducted and supported much of my work in the USA. On Martin Luther King Day 2010 he performed my The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace and my Requiem. On this occasion I shall be conducting Palladio [famous for its use on a TV ad for diamonds], two choral extracts, Benedictus & Ave verum [from the Armed Man & Stabat Mater respectively] and the USA premier of my Concerto for Euphonium & Orchestra played by David Childs for whom it was written.
Karl Jenkins Conducts "Palladio"
Americymru: You're a musician, your wife is a musician, your son is a musician, your daughter-in-law is a musician, your father was a musician, has music always been part of your family's life?
Karl: Well obviously that is the case. My father started the ball rolling really since he was hugely influential with regard to my musical education. He taught me piano from an early age and music was always in the house, both live & recorded. My wife Carol Barrat is a celebrated music educationalist while our son, a percussionist and film composer has just scored a Bollywood movie! His wife Rosie, whom he met in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain is currently playing oboe with the London Symphony Orchetra.
Americymru: You've said in other interviews and your biography that your father was the organist and choirmaster at your village's Methodist chapel, was he the greatest musical influence in your life? Do you think you've been the same influence in your son's life?
Karl: What we've done as parents is introduce Jody to music and by default, the musicians life so he's quite worldly for a young man [he's 28]. We did not force him in any way and having played piano & flute as a child, he asked to play percussion when he was ten. This was his instrument and became principal in the aforementioned NYOGB, won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music [where I had studied 30 years before] and graduated with first class honours. So, he's been his own man really but I suppose it helps in that we work in different areas. What we do all share as a family is a love of all good music, regardless of categorisation, and in any genre.
Americymru: How would you describe Welsh congregational singing to someone who's never seen it? Would you say that growing up with that musical experience effected or enriched you as a composer?
Karl: It's obviously hard to describe music in words but what makes it unique is the rawness of the vocal sound. On the printed page it looks like any other four part hymn but the sound, to me anyway, is hugely atmospheric especially when sung in Welsh. The sound influenced my Adiemus project which had a degree of global success. This was a mix of the 'classical' but with voices that were not from the European classical tradition but more "tribal". The text was my own invented language.
Americymru: You've performed and composed a very wide variety of instruments and styles of music and incorporate a great variety in your work, from the 13th century Roman Catholic Stabat Mater to Japanese haiku and African folk - what inspires or directs fitting these styles together in a piece? Where do you start writing music or creating music?
Karl: My musical journey, following academic classical training at Cardiff University & the RAM, has taken in a wide variety of genres and I've arrived at what I do now by way of being a musical tourist. Essentially I am a composer who always looks outside the European tradition for influences, texts & instrumentation, particularly percussion. With regard starting a piece, if I'm setting words then I immediately have a peg on which to hang the piece. If it's instrumental or Adiemus then I'm on my own! The principle is searching around for ideas [usually using a piano] and developing what takes my fancy. A huge amount of intuition is involved, but intuition based on an armoury of acquired musical craft; harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, form et.
Americymru: "Stabat" Mater (2008) is your adaptation of a 13th century Catholic liturgical hymn, in which you included an amazing variety of instruments and material from sources as wide as 13th century Persian poetry and the Epic of Gilgamesh, how did you come to create this, what was your process in expressing this?
Karl: Well the established text is there already. Then much of what I have expressed above came in to play, looking outside Europe to the Middle East/Holy Land for relevant [i.e. concerning grief] ancient text, employing languages that were lingua franca at the time and including indigenous instruments in the orchestration. The eminent Welsh poet [and academic] Grahame Davies [who wrote the words for my recently composed anthem for the National Assembly of Wales] did quite a bit of research for me with regard to the literature.
Americymru: You've said in interviews before that you "don't see any point in being a composer if you don't communicate with people," what does that mean to you? Do you feel that response in the audience is important, that response is the "product" or goal of a piece of art or music? What response do you want to create in your audiences?
Karl: I believe music should emotionally connect with an audience; make them cry, laugh, administer 'goose bumps! I've heard far too much music with 'one man and his dog' in the audience, the piece never heard again and the event receiving "critical acclaim".
Americymru: Wales seems to produce a lot of musical artists who would be (or are) described as "crossover", yourself included - do you think Wales has a musical character or tradition that inspires or tends toward experimentation or something like hybridization, a lack of adherence to artificial limitations of genre?
Karl: I don't like to use the term cross-over. I'm not sure what it means and I've explained what I do above. I don't think the Welsh like music particularly. What they do like are singers which is not necessarily the same thing. I like to think that what I do is at least individual and at least it's new. Most albums and repertoire [not just by Welsh artists] are a series of singers singing the same songs, songs that everyone knows. Many such artists are described as opera singers when they have never sang in an opera in their lives. At least good modern 'pop' has more integrity since it is newly composed.
Americymru: Did you have particular creative goals as an artist and if you did, have you achieved them? What would you like to look back on at the end of your life and see that you did or created?
Karl: Following my journey, I have come relatively late in life to what I do now, but the corollary is that I would not have arrived at this point without this musical tourism and the influence and skills that have come with it. There is still much to do. I'm setting the Gloria text for a Royal Albert Hall premier in July and there is much more to do.
Americymru: Is there any particular instrument you especially like to compose for? If so, what instrument and why?
Karl: Sounds pompous [which I'm not] but my instrument is the orchestra [& choir] and the rich palette of colours it provides.
Americymru: Is there any one work or piece that you created that you're particularly proud of or happy to have done? If so, what is it and why?
Karl: The worrying thing is that some of my most popular pieces were kind of written quickly and which I didn't set great store by. However, I suppose the Armed Man because of it's impact but I think there is better music in the Requiem.
Americymru: What music do you listen to for pleasure?
Karl: I listen far less than I did, most certainly because I'm always writing and I need a break! Favourites would be Mahler, Strauss, Wagner, Bach, Stravinsky, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Weather Report, Steely Dan........
