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Welsh American author David Lloyd

David Lloyd



themovingofthewater.jpg AmeriCymru: Hi David and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. Care to introduce your new short story collection, The Moving of the Water for our readers?

David: The Moving of the Water is a collection of stories set in a Welsh-American immigrant community in upstate New York during the 1960s, exploring their struggles, aspirations, and desires; how the past helps creates the present, how the present makes us reinterpret the past. Immigrants and their children live within competing cultural currents - some they welcome, some they ignore, some they struggle against. I want to entertain readers but also address large issues: what is “home” for an immigrant? how does culture shape behavior? what connects us to others, and what divides us?

AmeriCymru: What is the origin and significance of your title, The Moving of the Water?

David: The title is from the New Testament, John 5:2-3 - and that passage is the book’s epigraph: “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.” My characters, like those at the Bethesda pool, are (in different ways in different stories) hopeful and faithful, but complexly damaged. In a sense they all are “waiting for the moving of the water” - for healing, fulfillment, transformation. “The Moving of the Water” is also the title of the collection’s final story - and my favorite. Those interested can find it at the Virginia Quarterly Review web site: https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/06/moving-water .

My father emigrated to the US with my mother, eldest brother, and sister in 1948. While minister at the Welsh Presbyterian Church in Liverpool, he received a call from Moriah Presbyterian Church in Utica for a minister who could preach in Welsh. So I was born into a Welsh-American chapel community, attending two services on Sunday, Sunday school, choir practice, and so on. It’s no surprise that passages from the Bible and from Welsh hymns echo in my mind and memory!

AmeriCymru: Can you tell us something about the book cover?

David: The cover art is by Welsh artist Iwan Bala. I’ve admired Iwan’s political and cultural art for decades and found the image in a book of his art, Hon: Ynys Y Galon (This: Island of the Heart). It’s a detail from Iwan’s oil painting Cof, Bro, Mebyd (Memory, Community, Childhood), and shows a figure in a coracle-like boat on the open sea, the dark mountains of Wales looming behind. An umbilical cord stretches from this adult figure back to Wales as the archetypal head faces west - in my mind, towards the “new world.” The figure in the coracle is nourished by Wales, tethered to Wales, but striking out into the unknown.

AmeriCymru: One of your stories (included here) is "Dreaming of Home," which won the 2015 Americymru short story contest. What can you tell us about this story?

David: The main character is Llew, short for Llywelyn, an illustrious name in Wales because of Llywelyn the Great, King of Gwynedd, and his grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last independent prince of Wales, who died in battle in 1282. Llew is a nickname for Llywelyn, and in one of my stories Llew had also been a warrior. Another connection with these medieval warrior-princes is that “Llew” in Welsh means “lion.” In my story, Llew was a soldier in WWI who almost died of his wounds in battle. An immigrant to the US, Llew is psychologically wounded: he’s become an alcoholic, and during the evening of the story, he comes home drunk to his shabby apartment, turns on the TV, and hears news of an attack by the Viet Cong on the Bien Hoa air base. He falls asleep and dreams of his own battle, his wounding in a trench during a German mortar attack. In his delirium, surrounded by dying and dead comrades, his father appears in the trench to comfort Llew - and Llew asks his father to take him home. “But you are home, my boy,” his father tells him - meaning that this trench is a new home for Llew, one he can never leave. Llew wakes up - and remembers nothing of his dream except seeing his father. He falsely believes that he dreamed of his childhood in Wales, the home in the village where he “truly belonged.” But the story suggests that “home” is complicated for Llew, as for all of us. We have many homes that define who we are, and for Llew it is his childhood home in Wales, the flat where he lives in upstate New York, and also a trench in Belgium. The many places to which we belong reminds me of the passage from John 14:2-3: “In my father’s house, there are many mansions.”

AmeriCymru: "Anchored in the community of first-, second-, and third-generation Welsh Americans in Utica, New York, during the 1960s, the stories in David Lloyd’s The Moving of the Water delve into universal concerns: identity, home, religion, language, culture, belonging, personal and national histories, mortality." Is there anything unique about the Welsh-American community or are their concerns and experiences in any way universal among the various immigrant communities?

David: Utica, New York, where I grew up, was home to many immigrant communities: Irish, Italian, Polish, Eastern European Jewish, Welsh, Lebanese, among others. And more diverse populations have arrived since I left. While distinct in so many ways (religion, food, music, the language, and so on), the Welsh-American community definitely shared concerns and experiences with their neighbor communities. My family’s social life was centered around Moriah Church, where my father served as minister, similar to how the Catholic church was central to most of my Irish and Italian friends, and the synagogue to my Jewish friends. But culture is not static - it moves and spreads - so we all learned from each other. We all absorb what’s around us. I’m lucky to have a Welsh and an American heritage, and the weird blending that results.

AmeriCymru: You use Welsh words and phrases in many of the stories: how does the Welsh language function in the book?

David: Many contemporary writers from immigrant backgrounds include their languages of origin in their English-language stories. Translating their characters’ speech would sound false, since immigrants would naturally use a hybrid of English and the family language - in my case Welsh. At home my parents spoke English with Welsh accents, and every day from bore da (good morning) to nos da (good night) I heard some Welsh. At dinnertime, my mother would call out, “mae’r bwyd yn barod” - she’d never say, “food is ready.” In my stories the meaning of the Welsh that characters speak should be evident within the context, but at the end of the book I provide “Notes on Welsh Words, Phrases, and Names.”

AmeriCymru: "Lloyd’s stories are in the realist mode, yet sometimes broken up with startling, dream-like, hallucinatory passages that are decisive in opening up another range of experience." Would you agree with this assessment?

David: Yes I do agree. All the stories deal with people facing crises or challenges drawn from the “real world.” But life - for immigrants or indeed anyone - is not simply made up of verifiable facts. It’s also magical, mysterious, irrational, infused with memory - we dream, we fantasize, we hallucinate, we remember and misremember. I want to build those dimensions of life into some of my stories. So for example, in the story “The Visitor” a woman in her 70s receives a nightly visitor - Geraint, whom she’d hoped to marry when a young woman living in Wales, before her parents brought her to the US. She has conversations with this figment from her past - conversations that help her live in her present and understand the conditions of her early life. The conversations are real, but they’re also a fantasy arising from her past in Wales, impinging on her present in the US.

Another example is the story “Crooked Pie,” in which the ten year old son of Welsh immigrants who has assimilated into American culture visits a theme park based on Disneyfied renditions of Grimm’s fairy tales - Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks, and so on. He enters the House of the Crooked Man. There, in this magical place, he meets himself as he might be at age fifteen. This is impossible, but his double in a lengthy monologue gives him a vision of what it’s like for a boy to live through American culture of the mid to late 1960s. I hope this dream-like dimension conveys the traumatically rapid pace of deracination, and of dynamic American culture generally as experienced by the children of immigrants during that era (and in our current era!).

AmeriCymru: What attracted you to the short story genre? Will you be publishing more collections?

David: In adolescence I wanted to be a poet. And that identity continued through my college years. But while in the PhD program at Brown University, I took a fiction writing course with novelist John Hawkes - a magnificent teacher and an amazing writer. I was hooked. So I joined the Brown master’s degree creative writing program in fiction - not poetry - while completing my PhD. I soon discovered that I’m less interested in writing stand-alone stories than in extended projects, such as story cycles - that’s the case with my first collection, Boys: Stories and a Novella, and with this new book, The Moving of the Water. I am working on a novel now featuring a Welsh American - I won’t say more so I don’t spook myself!

AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little about your poetry?

David: I’ve published three poetry collections: The Everyday Apocalypse, The Gospel According to Frank, and Warriors. All include poems about Wales or Welsh-American experience, but The Gospel According to Frank is entirely about blended experience, the ebb and flow of cultural forms and ideas. The “Frank” of the title is Frank Sinatra, and so in general the poems explore issues relating to popular culture in twentieth-century America, such as fame, greed, creativity, and power. But in doing so, the forty-eight poems merge Sinatra’s public persona with other cultural materials, including the Old and New Testaments (this is, after all, Sinatra’s “gospel”!), Greek mythology, the medieval Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, and the medieval Welsh masterpiece, the Four Branches of The Mabinogi.

AmeriCymru: What's next for David Lloyd? Any new titles, readings in the works?

David: I have a new poetry collection, The Body’s Compass, just accepted by Salmon Poetry (based in Ireland). And I’ve been giving readings to promote The Moving of the Water. Last summer while in Wales I gave readings at Bangor University, the Imperial Hotel in Merthyr Tydfil, and the Workers Galley in Ynyshir. I have readings coming up at Wells College, Aurora, New York on February 26; at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York on April 4; and the Utica Public Library, Utica, New York on June 1. I’ll likely give a reading in Portland, Oregon in March.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

David: I’m thankful to see such dedicated engagement with Welsh culture and language on the AmeriCymru site. Books, music, art, film, photography - they give us pleasure, they expand our horizons. They also need our active support!





From the Wikipedia :- " Deck the Halls" (original English title: "Deck the Hall") is a traditional Yuletide and New Years' carol. The "fa-la-la" refrains were probably originally played on the harp. The tune is Welsh dating back to the sixteenth century, and belongs to a winter carol, Nos Galan.

The tune is that of an old Welsh air, first found in a musical manuscript by Welsh harpist John Parry Ddall (c. 17101782), but undoubtedly much older than that. The composition is still popular as a dance tune in Wales, and was published in the 1784 and 1794 editions of the harpist Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards. Poet John Ceiriog Hughes wrote the first published lyrics for the piece in Welsh, titling it "Nos Galan" ("New Year's Eve"). A middle verse was later added by folk singers. In the eighteenth century the tune spread widely, with Mozart using it in a piano and violin concerto and, later, Haydn in the song "New Year's Night.

Originally, carols were dances and not songs. The accompanying tune would have been used as a setting for any verses of appropriate metre. Singers would compete with each other, verse for verse known as canu penillion dull y De ("singing verses in the southern style"). The church actively opposed these folk dances. Consequently, tunes originally used to accompany carols became separated from the original dances, but were still referred to as "carols". The popular English lyrics for this carol are not a translation from the Welsh."

The above version ( together with many other tracks ) is performed by Dr J.Marshall Bevil on the Welsh traditional instrument - the crwth. Linked below is a three part interview with Dr Bevil about the instrument:-

...

Master of The Crwth - Digon o Grwth Part 1

Master of The Crwth - Digon o Grwth Part 2

Master of The Crwth - Digon o Grwth Part 3

...

crwth.jpg

Crwth-in-case.jpg Wikimedia Commons

Posted in: Music | 1 comments



AmeriCymru: Hi Gwyndaf and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. What can you tell us about your forthcoming album 'Songs My Mother Taught Me'?

Gwyndaf: This new album that I have just recorded has been something I have wanted to do for a few years now. I wanted to record works from people that i enjoyed listening to as I grew into who I am today.

AmeriCymru: When did you first realise that you had been gifted with an extraordinary voice? At what point did you decide to become a singer?

Gwyndaf: I was very fortunate to have been born into a wonderfully diverse musical family. My mother was an operatic contralto who opened my ears and soul to the wonderful world of Italian opera. It was perfect for me... I love drama on the stage but not in my real life. It is fantastic for me to suffer and battle and even die on stage and then go home to my fantastically normal life with my beautiful wife and daughter.

My father introduced me to Jazz and sacred music. He also brought amazing words of the Welsh Greats. This absolutely helped realize that words matter so much. Even to shape the phrasing in a musical score.

My grandparents brought the wonderful music of the 1920s to the 50s to my life.

Friends that showed me that we are all so different emotionally. We choose music for different reasons and why it touches our heart. Mostly from our culture, belief system and upbringing and life experiences. Especially suffering and love.

My wife and daughter are two of the greatest reasons why I continue to sing professionally. It is a hard life. Without a family it is also very lonely. From the day I met and began living with the love of my life, my professional life has been made much easier. Her support is shockingly strong. We created a beautiful child from our love. She will also be an artist. She oozes that wonderful artistry that is so wonderful to witness.

To answer your question of when i realized i had a gift of an extraordinary voice... Well I do not see or hear it. As a Welsh artist we are very critical of our voices and every step of the entire process.

Thank God that some people think I have a gift that is good enough to make a living. My wife is the greatest driving force in slowly lifting that insecurity from me. Maybe one day I will hear what others hear in me.

AmeriCymru: How would you describe your current repertoire?

Gwyndaf: My current repertoire is exactly what I love to do. A bit of everything that I like to think that I can do well, which is to sing and connect with an audience.

It is so wonderful to enjoy myself on a stage or a studio and have a person of any age come up to me and say that I had really touched them that evening.

Mainly older women. I love to sing songs from their youth. Somehow I understand that time better than today's.

AmeriCymru:  What is your proudest achievement or moment? Is there any one performance, tour or album in your career that stands out for you?

Gwyndaf:  My proudest achievement career wise will always be when my father got to see and hear me perform the lead in Il Trovatore before he died. I played along side my teacher from the age of 8 years old. He was so proud. I felt it was and still is the greatest performance of my life. It was a magical night. I will carry it in my heart forever.

My greatest recording is this one that I have just finished called Songs My Mother Taught Me. We can all relate to that term. Mothers have always taught us songs. It is my tribute to great composers, singers, musicians and all the lovely people who have shared their music with me over the past 49 years.

I hope to have it manufactured and on the market in the new year.

AmeriCymru:  Where can people go online to hear/buy your music?

Gwyndaf:  My website can be found at welshtenor.ca .

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Gwyndaf:  I hope that all the Welsh people world wide realize, cherish and share their God given gifts with anyone who is willing to listen. I know that it builds and creates wonderful artistry in so many people.

I can only say thank you to everyone that have shared their gifts with me. It helped make me the man and artist that I am today.

Singing is healthy. It connects all of us. No matter what language. Mind you Welsh is by far the best.

Posted in: Music | 0 comments

Out of Control


By Paul Steffan Jones AKA, 2018-12-08

What you wish for is

not always careful

a glib handover

in an ambient Tiger tank

in shadows of oboes

on an European coastline

you know so well

a meaningful vote

devoid of much meaning

not the kind of leaving

you had in mind

when you let that paper

drop into the aperture

we’ve been mis-sold

overblown oligarchies

and demoralised democracies

so let’s invent pop up monarchies

and subvert history

as it is all made up

as it stumbles along

or at least that’s what

the fecklessness of many

of our leaders seems to suggest

and remember to schedule a tour

of our shiny new fiefdom

some time after we have

regained control of it

not that we ever had it

under our control

journey to the more neglected areas

whose road signs brightly herald

the contribution made

by the former partner

to the construction of those routes

linking these communities

to the prospect of a more civilizing life

though by then these may well

have been taken down

or fallen down

amid the amnesia often

reserved for the poor

ticking a box

shouting the loudest

and decrying those

who don’t share exactly

the same views  

doesn’t always deliver our wish lists

as our unity drip drip drips

into stalactite statues

in mothballed baggage reclaim halls

what we've packed

is what we've become

Posted in: Poetry | 0 comments
MY first book Titled  The Home World Chronicles darkness Rising Book 1

This is my first book and I am currently working on book two, so I am still learning.

I have added part of the preface in my book. The book has only just gone up so I don't know how much I am allowed to show.


Preface (Snippets of )


This story sort of came to me in a dream, the charters names and plot danced in front of my eyes at around three am forcing me to wake up. By four am I was writing the story you see before you.

I did not want to write about the usual stuff but the charters had other ideas on the matter, they pushed me in certain directions and did things I did not want them to do but they are their own people after all. Who am I to interfere?

You will notice that there is a large Welsh influence throughout the book (shock horror I am Welsh), there will be a little Welsh folklore as well as symbols and some contextual passages throughout the book that all add to the storyline both in this book and hopefully in books to come.

Links with another planet which you are all familiar with will become apparent as will the link between this world and the creation of the Welsh culture which may not be made clear in this book. What was the reason for this?

Most books and films that have characters from the UK in them only have them from England, Ireland, and Scotland. I felt this to be wrong and that it was time for a change.

Paperback back cover

Myth, magic add a little Welsh folklore.

Throw in an evil so old that it is only called the darkness.

Add two children, one boy and one girl both 12years old and attending the first year of school at the same time.

The school teaches magic born and mundane alike and NO there is no waving of sticks or flying on broomsticks (broomsticks are for sweeping after all).

 

Thomas is rich arrogant and entitled, also unhappy and lonely.

Andra is quiet, bright, not at all comfortable with the way she looks and also lonely.

We follow them through their epic battle with evil.

We follow them through the good times and the bad, through joy and sorrow.

They live on a planet that is in a different dimension, where dragons are thought extinct and mythical creatures exist.

I have two introductions that may characters Andra and Thomas made me write, I will post them if anyone is interested.

Yes I know there will be errors but I will learn from them and do better next time 

https://www.amazon.com/Home-World-Chronicles-Darkness-Rising-ebook/dp/B07L2XTP8L/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544093935&sr=8-1&keywords=Thaddeus+Hardcastle

https://www.amazon.com/Home-World-Chronicles-Darkness-Rising/dp/1790648718/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1544093994&sr=8-2&keywords=Thaddeus+Hardcastle

  Diolch    guys (and girls)

 


WE HAVE A WINNER!!



And the winner is..... Dave Klein. Dave will be informed via email and his tickets will be available at 'will call' on the night. For those who entered but did not win, don't despair!! You can take advantage of DCINY's extremely generous 20% discount offer for AmeriCymru readers. The code is DCG30382 and it can be used online, over the phone, or in person at Carnegie Hall. Don't miss this prestigious annual event BOOK NOW!



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"Sir Karl Jenkins is the most performed living composer in the world."



We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that Distinguished Concerts International have made available a pair of tickets for the forthcoming Karl Jenkins concert in New York at the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall on Monday, January 21st, 2019. The program includes Sir Karl Jenkins’s Symphonic Adiemus as well as Jenkins’s Stabat Mater. Read our (2010) interview with Karl Jenkins here

We are offering these tickets as a QUIZ PRIZE on Americymru!

Just answer the three easy quiz questions below ( answers can all be found on Wikipedia ) and send them to us at americymru@gmail.com ( all email addresses will be deleted when the competition closes ). We'll throw all the entries in a hat and pick the winner! Please email us by Monday, January 14th, 2019 no later than 9 PM ( Pacific Time ). Tickets will be ready at will call on 1/21 at the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall; the winner will just need to bring a photo ID.

Only one entry per email address is permitted. Duplicates will be disqualified. You do not need to be an AmeriCymru member or logged into the site in order to enter this competition.

If you don't win the competition, please do not despair. DCINY is very kindly offering a 30% discount code for AmeriCymru readers. The code is DCG30382 and it can be used online, over the phone, or in person at Carnegie Hall

Karl Jenkins Quiz



  1. Which famous jazz-rock fusion band was Karl Jenkins a member of in the 70's?
  2. Which of Jenkins' works was listed as No. 1 in Classic FM's "Top 10 by living composers"?
  3. Where was Karl Jenkins born?



The Music of Sir Karl Jenkins: A 75th Birthday Celebration



Monday, January 21, 2019 at 7:00 PM
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall

DCINY presents the US premiere of Welsh composer and DCINY’s composer-in-residence Sir Karl Jenkins’s Symphonic Adiemus as well as Jenkins’s Stabat Mater. Maestro Jonathan Griffithleads the Distinguished Concerts Orchestra and Distinguished Concerts Singers International in a celebration of Sir Karl Jenkins’s 75th birthday.

Performers

Jonathan Griffith, Conductor
Baidar Al Basri, Ethnic Soloist
Distinguished Concerts Orchestra and Distinguished Concerts Singers International

Program

All-Sir Karl Jenkins Program
Symphonic Adiemus (US Premiere)
Stabat Mater

Tickets $20-$100!
On Sale Now!

Visit CarnegieHall.org or call 212-247-7800

Box Office: 57th Street and Seventh Avenue

Ticket Link: https://www.carnegiehall.org/calendar/2019/01/21/the-music-of-sir-karl-jenkins-0700pm



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Posted in: Music | 0 comments

The musings of a Welsh journalist in Welsh Wales


By Alan Stephen Evans , 2018-12-04
The musings of a Welsh journalist in Welsh Wales

Llanelli Onine

It was many years ago that I first met Ceri Shaw online. I would go so far as to say that both he and I gave Zuckerburg the idea for Facebook.

At the time we were dabbling with what technology was available, basically an old sospan fach, a cheeseboard, some tin foil and a transistor radio demolished for parts.

That said we managed to create two networking sites. Americymru and Deheubarth.

Years later a magazine fell off my dusty old shelf and up popped Ceri's name again. I guessed that the platform called NING had long gone but also guessed that Ceri might have found another way to bond people together like a grand mixture for Welshcakes. 

He had and Americymru was and is alive and kicking. Sad to say that my old NING site is still in a folder on a hard drive somewhere. I did however turn my attentions to writing for a newspaper before leaving having been unpaid to the sum of almost £7k. Yes they are about. 

So it was that I set about doing what I know best and creating another online platform for my hometown of Llanelli. Llanelli Online. What else? The site is a news led site but also has some great features like interviews with politicians, celebs and local characters. 

It is here then that I will direct you to find out more and it is here here that I will endeavour to share some of the best bits with you. 

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you enjoy the blog. 

Posted in: lifestyle | 3 comments



Link to purchase on Amazon:- Bring The Rising Home!



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For anyone who is unacquainted with the historical details of the 1831 Merthyr Rising, the following link should be of some assistance - Merthyr Rising . Of course, the most thorough and authoritative account of these events can be found in Gwyn Williams' - The Merthyr Rising.

The Rising is commemorated with an annual festival in Castle Street, Merthyr where twenty four of the protestors were shot and killed in 1831. This collection was published to coincide with the 2017 event.

The anthology consists of 25 poems (four in Welsh with English translations) and accompanying illustrations by Welsh artist Gustavius Payne. For more details about Mike Jernkins and Gustavius Payne please see the biographical details and links at the bottom of this page.



In 'Ble?' Mike Jenkins asks:-

Ble mae'r enwau'r pedwerydd ar hugain,
gafodd eu saethu gan y fyddin?

Where are the names of the twenty-four,
killed by the army in this square?

Other poems in the collection directly refer to the historical events of 1831 but more concern themselves with contemporary living conditions in Merthyr Tydfil and elsewhere.

In 'Bag Full of Writings (For Merthyr Rock Bands)' we meet a street poet/songwriter who is down on his luck:-

He's been living in the dole age
since they invented it;
his plasticine face moulded
by worry and rage.

A chance encounter with a young lad fresh out of Swansea jail is immortalised in 'Outa Jail':-

Don' know wha I woz doin, see,
pissed outa my ead-
least I gotta job washin cars,
better 'an-a las one
in-a juice factree
all overtime, no breaks an unions,
treated like bloody sheep.

Many of Mike's poems give voice to the disadvantaged, the homeless and the destitute. For example 'In Portland, Oregon' recounts an incident at the local bus station when a homeless person temporarily waylaid Mikes bus when he was on his way to a West Coast Eisteddfod event in the town:-

A downtown junkie came out
from the toilet ranting
and hi-jacked our bus,
the black woman driver calming him
until the cops turned up.

The collection ends with the somewhat disturbing 'We Want it Back!' in which the protagonists are heard to demand:-

We want it back
we want our country back!
We want Grammar Schools
(though not Sec-Mods),
where working-class kids
can achieve (well, a few of them)
we want corporal punishment
like the cane and the tawse,
pupils will be grateful
when they are abused


There is perhaps a certain irony in demanding a partial return to conditions that once led to insurrectionary violence and bloodshed in the streets. But, Mike Jenkins is no preacher and readers are left to their own deliberations and to draw their own conclusions.

The illustrations are powerful and provocative throughout and perfectly evocative of Mike's poetic themes. In a note at the end of the book Gustavius Payne, after detailing their many shared interests, has this to say about his artistic collaboration with Mike Jenkins:-

"It may be that the basic ingredients of our artistic endeavours have more in common than many, and perhaps explains why the visual work I've done resonates so closely with the series of poems that Mike has written."

Whatever the shared background and interests, their collaboration has produced an outstanding book. We have no hesitation in recommending this collection to anyone with an interest in contemporary Merthyr, Welsh working class history or fine poetry and artwork.



Notes on Two Welsh Artists

Mike Jenkins is a retired teacher of English at comprehensive schools. He lives in Merthyr Tydfil, has co-edited 'Red Poets' for 23 years and has blogged weekly on his website www.mikejenkins.net since 2009. He runs creative writing workshops with children and adults and organises regular poetry events in Merthyr and elsewhere in south Wales. He is winner of the 1998 Wales Book of the Year for a book of short stories, Wanting To Belong (Seren); his latest book of poetry is in Merthyr vernacular Sofa Surfin' (Carreg Gwalch); and he was shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Poetry Award 2017.

Gustavius Payne is a Welsh figurative artist, represented by Ffin-Y-Parc Gallery, Llanrwst, where his work is regularly exhibited and held in stock. His paintings are also held in collections including at the University of South Wales and the Museum of Modern Art, Wales. He has exhibited regularly since 1994 including a touring exhibition with Mike jenkins in 2011/2012, funded by Arts Council Wales.

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The Music of Sir Karl Jenkins: A 75th Birthday Celebration



Monday, January 21, 2019 at 7:00 PM - Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage, Carnegie Hall

DCINY presents the US premiere of Welsh composer and DCINY’s composer-in-residence Sir Karl Jenkins’s Symphonic Adiemus as well as Jenkins’s Stabat Mater. Maestro Jonathan Griffithleads the Distinguished Concerts Orchestra and Distinguished Concerts Singers International in a celebration of Sir Karl Jenkins’s 75th birthday.

Performers:

Jonathan Griffith, Conductor
Baidar Al Basri, Ethnic Soloist
Distinguished Concerts Orchestra and Distinguished Concerts Singers International

Program:

All-Sir Karl Jenkins Program
Symphonic Adiemus (US Premiere)
Stabat Mater

Tickets $20-$100!
On Sale Now!

Visit CarnegieHall.org or call 212-247-7800
Box Office: 57th Street and Seventh Avenue

Ticket Link: https://www.carnegiehall.org/calendar/2019/01/21/the-music-of-sir-karl-jenkins-0700pm

Posted in: Music | 0 comments

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AmeriCymru has 4 spots available in the right hand column on ad supporting pages. These ads are $25 for a year AND we'll throw in the period between now and Christmas as well!!! We welcome ads for Welsh themed books, music, artwork and gifts BUT, please act now, time for this offer is running out.

We also have 5 $10 dollar spots on our new Christmas shopping page. If you want to advertise here to test the response, we will credit your $10 toward a full length (12 month) ad next year.  So, for a mere $15 extra you can advertise right up until next Christmas. Use the PayPal button below to reserve your spot or email americymru@gmail.com for more details.


Christmas Ads 2018-2019


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