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URGENT: Please Please Support this Appeal!!!

Carwyn Edwards has probably done more to promote Wales in the USA than any other man alive. He inspired us and hundreds of others to take up the cudgel. He is now seriously sick in hospital with infective Endocarditis. If you have anything to spare please support this campaign!!!!

For those of you who don't know Carwyn Edwards let me just say that he was the most influential promoter of Wales in the USA for many years. He inspired me, Dave Parry and o thers to spend our time productively and promote Cymru. The news of his current medical condition is devastating!! We must help our own AND Carwyn Edwards is the first among us. His Wales Newsletter went out to 30,000 people a week long before AmeriCymru was born. I have donated personally and I will give more. Please help this online Welsh American pioneer in his hour of need!!

"He is suffering from Infective Endocarditis, which is a bacterial infection in the blood that settled on his mitral heart valve. This growth grew to abo ut 2cm, and then started showering blood clots throughout his body. This has led to him having his left leg amputated above the knee and he will also lose part of his lower right leg. The clots have also seriously damaged his kidneys and spleen and he is presently on constant dialysis. The clots found their way into his brain causing lesions and hemorrhaging. This brain injury is delaying the open heart surgery that he needs to replace his heart valve." https://www.gofundme.com/carwyn

The turbulent history of the south Wales coalfield is a constant theme of this complex story of childhood and family history viewed through the eyes and in the memory of an acclaimed writer and editor.

Where the Stream Ran Red  is the story of one place, one family (yet, in many ways hauntingly true of families throughout the south Wales coalfield) whose narrative takes us as far as the West Indies in the time of slavery, the high seas off Singapore and the pogroms of Tsarist Ukraine.

This is the story of the entry of Gilfach Goch into history as a mining valley, separate from the anthill of the forked valleys of Rhondda, with its own curious tripartite administration and its own special part to play in the turbulence of the south Wales coalfield. The red-tinted bed of a slim stream rising in the moorland overlooking a small, isolated unpopulated valley, a cil fach , gave its name to the writer’s birthplace.

Out of the years of productivity and optimism, and the grinding misery of long, bitter strikes and economic depression, rises a compendium of stories, in which stark and sobering facts jostle with speculative reconstruction of events in past centuries and memories of boyhood in the Valleys.

‘I was prompted to write by a sense of my own failure to ask my parents, sisters and others, who were witnesses of events before I was born and during forgotten childhood years, about their experiences in two wars and the years of strikes and depression between them.’ explained author Sam Adams.

‘In the boyhood times I recall the pits were busy day and night, all able-bodied men and increasing numbers of women were employed - and we all had ration books. Families had to bear the pain of the loss of loved ones in the war, sickness had to be borne, but people simply got on with it, in the valleys as elsewhere.’

‘Stoicism and understatement were ingrained in the code of the mining valleys; I do not think my family differed from others in telling me very little about their own histories. In my case, by the time I was thoughtful enough to want to find out, it was already too late. There was nothing I could do about all the lost personal testimony, except try to ensure that our children and grandchildren would not regret, as I have done, missed chances to ask how we came to be where we are.’

‘I decided I would write for them what I remembered, and what I could find out, about the family and the times in which they lived.’ he added.

In common with many in south Wales, the author’s family has roots spread wide – from Derbyshire and Somerset to Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Breconshire, and tales of origins (lost glories even) carefully preserved and passed down from generation to generation.

Writer and editor Sam Adams was born and brought up in Gilfach Goch, Glamorgan, when it was still a busy mining valley, his elementary school days there coinciding with the Second World War. Having studied English at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, he combined a career in education with work as writer and editor.

His poems and critical writing have appeared in all the magazines of Welsh writing in English and he has made more than a hundred contributions to the Carcanet Press magazine PN Review . His editorial work includes the Collected Poems and Collected Stories of Roland Mathias and among his other publications are three monographs in the Writers of Wales series, three collections of poems and the novel Prichard’s Nose (Y Lolfa, 2010).

Where the Stream Ran Red – Memories and Histories of a Welsh Mining Valley by Sam Adams (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.

The Mimosa in the 1860's. Wikimedia Commons

In an important new book, published by Y Lolfa, author Sion T. Jobbins calls for the 28th May to be commemorated annually in Wales as 'Flag Day'. He explains the reasoning behind this suggestion in the following succinct paragraph:

"There is no designated Flag Day for the Red Dragon. The author would propose 28 May, which was the day the flag was hoisted on board the Mimosa ship on its voyage to Patagonia in 1865. This was the first known and dated occasion when the flag was flown by Welsh people as a symbol of Welsh national identity."

The book is a treasure trove of information about the Ddraig Goch from the earliest times to the present day. For instance did you know that:

• The Ddraig Goch flag in its present form was only officially adopted as the flag of Wales in 1959?
• The Red Dragon was originally the banner of the Roman legionary cohorts. Their name for it was the draco coccinus. Both terms entered the Welsh vocabulary as loan words (somewhat adapted) from the Latin?

There is much more detail about the Flag's 2000 year history and at slightly less than 100 pages this book is the most informative and entertaining on its subject matter that you are likely to find. Of course the departure of the Mimosa from Liverpool Dock in 1865 is in itself an historic occasion worth celebrating. The voyage led to the founding of Wales first and only colony in the America's. For more on the voyage of the Mimosa see the links below. To purchase the book go here:- The Red Dragon - The Story of the Welsh Flag

And remember to commemorate Flag Day on May 28th!

From the Wikipedia :- "The idea of a Welsh colony in South America was put forward by Professor Michael D. Jones, a Welsh nationalist non-conformist preacher based in Bala who had called for a new "little Wales beyond Wales". He spent some years in the United States, where he observed that Welsh immigrants assimilated very quickly compared with other peoples and often lost much of their Welsh identity. He proposed setting up a Welsh-speaking colony away from the influence of English. He recruited settlers and provided financing. Australia, New Zealand and even Palestine were considered, but Patagonia was chosen for its isolation and the Argentines' apparently generous offer of 100 square miles (260 km²) of land along the Chubut River in exchange for settling the still-unconquered land of Patagonia for Argentina."

The Mimosa :- "The Mimosa was a clipper ship best known for carrying the first Welsh emigrants to South America in 1865.

Their aim was to establish a Welsh colony which would preserve the Welsh language and culture. The proposed site for the colony was in the Chubut River valley. On September 15, 1865 the first town in the Chubut colony was named Rawson, and the settlers went on to build the settlements at Gaiman and Trelew.

On World Book Day this year, Thursday, 3 March,Gomer Press will launch Ceredigion: At my Feet /Wrth fy Nhraed .

Talented photographer Iestyn Hughes will present his new book at the Drwm in the National Library of Wales at 7pm.

His striking pictures take us on a personal journey around Ceredigion looking at past and present images of the county. We travel from coast to uplands, through towns and villages in good times and bad, through the eyes of an adopted ‘Cardi’ whose love for his county is visible in every frame ...

Iestyn Hughes, who lives in Bow Street, says that “Our formative years (mine were spent inAnglesey) are incredibly important in forging a sense of belonging and community, and I lacked such an emotional bond with Ceredigion. So the idea of a photographic project based on Ceredigion formed in my mind. At the very least, it would get me out of the house and at best, it might help me feel less of a stranger to the place. I upgraded my camera gear, put on my boots, and began a long process of wandering here, there and everywhere, getting acquainted with parts of the landscape and some of the people around me ...”

According to Iestyn, capturing the county is “like trying to paint a portrait of a bored teenager who won’t sit still. The best I can do is to offer a glimpse of a ‘then and now’, with or without the blemishes, some of it real, some of it imagined and idealized, some of it lost forever, in the hope of leaving an impression. After all, as details, words and images fade away, all that remains is an impression. I just hope it’s an interesting and lasting one.

“It is a visual journey – a combination of past impressions, formed from pictures I saw and was sometimes captivated by as a curator over many years, and a contemporary pictorial record, a moment in time that anyone can experience for themselves now, if they travel thoughtfully around the county.

“Many of the places I’ve photographed are easy to reach by car. As you turn the pages, you’re taken, more or less, on a journey eastwards to the remote uplands, then clockwise around the county, popping inland now and again, up the coast from the Teifi right up to the Dyfi, sometimes setting foot in neighbouring counties, then home sweet home again, back to Aberystwyth.

”Iestyn adds that Ceredigion is “like a flower waiting for sun, it bursts open with life in the glow of any social event! Those I met at carnivals, races, theatrical performances, food festivals, farmers’marts, livestock sales, village shows, young farmers’ rallies, eisteddfodau, elections, Welsh-language classes, choral evenings, society meetings, protests, seaside cleanups, lectures, and myriad gatherings, proved to me that Ceredigion is alive and brimming with people who care for its heritage and who are passionate about securing its future. It’s the Cardis, more than any particular spot on the landscape, that have left the most abiding impression.

”Ceredigion: At my Feet / Wrth fy Nhraed by Iestyn Hughes will be launched at the National Library of Wales on 3 March at 7pm. Spaces for the launch are limited, so please contact GomerPress in advance if you wish to attend (elen@gomer.co.uk / 01559 363090).Iestyn Hughes will also be signing copies of the book in Aberystwyth on Saturday, 5 March, at Siop y Pethe at 11am and Siop Inc at 2.30pm.Ceredigion:

At My Feet / Wrth fy Nhraed is now available from your local bookshop or directly from the publisher, Gomer Press, Llandysul on www.gomer.co.uk. It’s an ideal gift for all Cardis and a wonderful souvenir for visitors to the county. Bibliographic details

Ceredigion: At my Feet / Wrth fy NhraedIestyn HughesPublished by Gomer Press

ISBN 9781848517516, £14.99, paperback, 216 pages

"Esme's passions are treated sensitively and honestly in this memoir, brought again to life so graphically by Teleri"  Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas

Buy 'Esme: Guardian of Snowdonia' here

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This is the story of Esme Kirby, the heroine of Thomas Firbank's 1939 international bestseller, I Bought A Mountain, which portrayed the rigours of farming in Snowdonia, North Wales.

Esme's marriage to Thomas ended at the beginning of the Second World War and this book takes up her life as she struggled to cope alone on the 3000 acre Dyffryn Mymbyr sheep farm. Still a young woman, she could easily have given up such an arduous life but, instead, she grew to love her vocation and appreciate the fact that she lived in the most remarkable of landscapes.

Such was her fondness for Snowdonia, and concern for its future, that she later established the Snowdonia National Park Society, a 'watchdog' to ensure that the landscape was protected from any adverse development. She also led a campaign to re-establish colonies of the native red squirrel in Anglesey. Her legacy in this beautiful, rural community continues to this day.

Teleri Bevan comes from a farming background, yet her working life was spent at the BBC where she launched Radio Wales as its Editor and later became the Head of Programmes for BBC Wales radio and television. In retirement Teleri has enjoyed writing books about women who made distinctive contributions to rural life in 20th century Wales: firstly the story of establishing Rachel's Dairy, and then recording the accomplishments of the Ladies of Blaenwern , who bred world-famous Welsh cobs.

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From the Six Nations to the European football finals, flying the Red Dragon flag of Wales will be very popular this year. However, the author of a new book on the history of the Welsh flag has called upon the people of Wales not to fly the Union Jack. Highly regarded popular author Siôn Jobbins believes that for Welsh people to fly the Union Jack is to "hoist up the white flag and surrender Welsh nationality".

His comments appear in a new comprehensive history of the iconic Welsh flag published by Y Lolfa– the publishers who recently launched little Red Dragon flag stickers for motorists to place over the Union Jack flag on the newly designed driving license.

‘Flying the Union Jack means always, in the final analysis, deferring to Westminster and airbrushing Wales from the picture.’ says Sion Jobbins ‘Where we have the Union Flag – such as the Olympic Games in a few months’ time, we’ll see that Wales is invisible and doesn’t exist. To fly the Union Jack is to agree ultimately that our Welshness can only by in the image allowed within Westminster rule and sensibilities.’

The book details the story behind one of the world’s most distinctive flags and Wales’s greatest symbol. Jobbins also makes some very interesting discoveries. Readers may be surprised to know that the popular flag was only made the official flag of Wales in 1959. Jobbins recalls campaigns to have the Welsh flag recognised had included local nationalist activists and Bangor students climbing up the flag pole on Caernarfon Castle’s Eagle Tower on St David’s Day in 1932 to tear down the Union Jack.

The vast majority of Welsh people may also be unaware that the official flag of Wales in the 1950s was not the one they now know and love. Rather, it was the ‘Welsh Office’ design which was the official flag. It was only following a mass campaign lead by the Eisteddfod Gorsedd in 1958 that the Cabinet decided in 1959 in that the familiar and popular flag would, at last, be the official flag.

Jobbins also suggests 28th of May be the ‘Flag Day’ of the Red Dragon as it was on this day in 1865 that the first recorded flying of the flag in its modern incarnation was made. The flag was flown aboard the Mimosa ship as it sailed from Liverpool with the first settlers for the Welsh colony in Patagonia.

Sion Jobbins was born in Zambia and raised in Cardiff and is also the author of the popular book ‘The Welsh National Anthem: its story, its meaning’ also published by Y Lolfa.

The Red Dragon – The Story of the Welsh Flag is full of photographs, cuttings and illustrations and sure to appeal to both visitors to Wales and locals alike and is keenly priced for the impulsive buyer.

The Red Dragon - The Story of the Welsh Flag by Siôn Jobbins (£3.99, Y Lolfa) is available now from all good bookshops.

David Lloyd

AmeriCymru: Hi David and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. I think it would be fair to say that you are an American writer with an intimate connection to Wales. Care to tell us a little about your Welsh background?

David: My father was born and grew up in Corris, near Machynlleth, and my mother in Pontrhydyfen, near Port Talbot - Welsh speaking, chapel-centered villages in those days, with Corris being all about slate and Pontrhydyfen depending on coal mining. They met in Aberystwyth, where my mother was a university student and my father a visiting minister. After marriage, my father served as minister in Ferndale (where my eldest brother was born) and then at the Heathfield Rd. Welsh Chapel in Liverpool (where my sister was born). When Moriah Presbyterian Church in Utica, New York put out a call for a Welsh-speaking minister, my father wanted to try it out, and brought the family over in 1949, intending to stay only a few years. My other brother and I were born in the US, and the family stayed on. So I grew up in the Welsh American community in Utica, which was very active in those days. At the time he retired, my father was the last minister in the area to preach and hold services in Welsh.

David Lloyd on a road near Corris, where his father was born.

AmeriCymru: You recently won the West Coast Eisteddfod Online Short Story Competition with your story Dreaming of Home . What can you tell us about this story?

David: "Dreaming of Home" is from a story collection titled The Moving of the Water, with all stories set in the Welsh American community of Utica during the 1960s. In this story, an immigrant from Wales named Old Llew (short for Llewelyn but also “lion” in Welsh) returns to his apartment after a day of drinking. He watches a TV news report on fighting in Vietnam, falls asleep, and dreams. And what he dreams about is his own battle experience in WWI. Of course WWI affected Wales terribly, with the loss of young men devastating communities. In his dream, Llew relives a bloody attack in the trenches, is visited by his father (because it’s a dream after all), and asks to be taken away from the trenches, back home. "But you are home," his father tells him. “Dreaming of Home” and other stories in The Moving of the Water explore the ambiguous nature of “home” for someone like Llew. Is home where you came from, or where you currently live? Is your true home the land of your first language and your formative years? Or is your home a product of the defining experiences of your life, such as fighting in a WWI trench or in Vietnam? I don’t want my stories to provide answers - I want to dramatize and get readers thinking about certain questions.

AmeriCymru: How would you characterise the concept of "hiraeth"? Is it more than "homesickness"?

David: “Hiraeth” is a complex word, made more complex by being sometimes used in a sentimental way. I think “hiraeth” is about a profound longing - for the security of the past, for the remembered (and mis-remembered) past, for places that are etched in memory. It’s a longing for “home,”  however that home might be conceived. So yes, it’s much more than homesickness - an existential longing that all humans experience.

AmeriCymru: You edited the 2009 Parthian collection Other Land . That collection "examines Wales and being Welsh-American through divergent poetics and perspectives." How would you describe your perspective?

David: I know that my identity has been shaped by the values, accents, stories, and memories of my Welsh parents - their distinct ways of being in the world. My identity has also been shaped by the American values, accents, landscapes around me, not to mention TV, music, films, books, education. I was raised on both “Calon Lân” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” you might say. I am fascinated by the hybrid or blended nature of identity - of the identities of all Americans, even those descended from pilgrims on the Mayflower, even Native Americans. My perspective is that I don’t want to write or read about the trappings of being Welsh - hymn-singing, coal mining, leeks, and so on. I want to write and read about the deeper workings in people’s lives that make them who they are.

David Lloyd (center) with (from left) Welsh poets Nigel Jenkins, Menna Elfin, Iwan Llwyd

AmeriCymru: In your 1994 anthology The Urgency of Identity you featured many of the most important English-language Welsh poets of the 80's and 90's. Do you believe that "English-language Welsh poets create a divided art"?

David: I wouldn’t use the term “divided” in describing writings by English-language Welsh poets, though I do recognize the strains and tensions they experience, working in a bilingual nation where English has been dominant only for last hundred or so years. I think the best English-language Welsh poets are publishing some of the most original and important verse written anywhere, using English to express their unEnglish identities. I love Robert Minhinnick’s dense, energized language and political commitment. I’m interested in every new book John Barnie publishes, because he’s pushing edges in multiple genres. And then there’s exciting work produced from Welsh-language writers (and musicians and artists) - poet and musician Twm Morys is an example. Iwan Bala’s art has been ground-breaking for Wales - in his drawings he uses Welsh and English words, recognizing the fraught bilingual reality. He’s engaged with “remapping” Wales and Welsh culture through his art.

AmeriCymru: Please tell us a little about your other work. In particular your novels and short stories.

David: I published my first book of fiction, Boys: Stories and a Novella, with Syracuse University Press in 2004.  That work (like my new manuscript, The Moving of the Water) is a linked series of stories taking place in my hometown of Utica. Twelve stories collectively titled "On Monday"  happen on the same day (a Monday, as you might guess), in February of 1966. Main characters in some stories reappear as minor characters in other stories. As a collection the stories explore ways in which American culture shapes (and mis-shapes) its children.  The novella, "Boys Only," features a character named Chris from a Welsh background, and one of my favorite scenes is between him and his Welsh-speaking Taid.

In 2013 I published a novel, Over the Line, again set in upstate New York. This story takes place during a week in the life of Justin, a teenager in a town buckling under the pressures of unemployment, endemic crime, and rising drug use. It’s something of a mystery story, as Justin gets closer and closer to the unknown source of methamphetamine in his community. I’m interested not only in how society affects an individual’s development but also in the concept of heroism - as an ideal, an illusion, and a reality.

The most recent of my three poetry collections is Warriors , published by Salt Publications in the UK but available in the US via Amazon and the Salt web site. I review books occasionally and write literary criticism, such as articles on R. S. Thomas and, recently, Brenda Chamberlain.

AmeriCymru: What's next for David Lloyd? Any new projects in the pipeline?

David: I’m working on two projects: finishing a new poetry collection, tentatively titled The Body’s Compass, and undertaking final edits for my story collection, The Moving of the Water, which I hope soon to send to publishers to consider. I’ve been publishing some of those stories. You can find one titled “Home” in the on-line Welsh journal Lampeter Review and one titled “The Key” in the US journal Stone Canoe .

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

David: The story of Welsh-American life has been well documented by historians - and that excellent work is ongoing. Contemporary poets have been exploring the experience of being Welsh and American - including those in my Other Land anthology, such as Jon Dressel, William Greenway, and Margaret Lloyd. But I would love to see more Welsh American writers drawing on their cultural experience and identity - poems, stories, memoirs, cross-genre works: there’s a rich vein of experience yet to be mined.