Americymru is immensely proud and pleased to announce that it will be holding the first Americymru International Film Festival in Portland, Oregon between August 23rd and August 28th 2010. The festival will coincide with the 2010 Left Coast Eisteddfod which will be held on the weekend of Aug 27th-Aug 29th. The likely final list of film categories for submission is listed below.

"This is the festival that honours the individual voice. Its mission is to provide a worldwide public forum for films made by Welsh & Celtic filmmakers. We also welcome films inspired by or based in Wales ."

To enter a film or video click below

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For details of this years Eisteddfod please CLICK HERE .

Best Welsh Language Film
Best Wales based production
Best Celtic language FilmBest Original Screenplay AwardBest Film under 5 minutesBest Film under 10 minutesBest Film under 15 minutesBest Film under 20 minutesBest Film under 35 minutesBest Film under 65 minutesBest Film under 70 minutesBest Film under 80 minutesBest UK Short under 5 minutesBest UK Short under 10 minutesBest UK Short under 20 minutesBest American Short FilmBest International Short FilmBest Student FilmBest Young FilmmakerFirst Film North AmericaFirst Film InternationalMusic Based Video / FilmPublic Service / Community AwardBest Animation / CGIBest DocumentaryBest Film USABest Horror FilmBest American Feature FilmBest International Feature FilmBest Feature FilmBest in Festival

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Reproduced with kind permission from David Western's Portland Lovespoon Blog
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With less than a week to go before the 2012 West Coast Eisteddfod kicks off, here's another look at our incredible lovespoon for all of those 'undecided' donors out there!! If you haven't yet donated a buck or two (or more) to the Eisteddfod, you are going to miss out on a chance to win this spoon for your very own!!! Each dollar you donate equals one ticket for our big raffle draw during this years Eisteddfod event... the more you donate, the better your odds become!

This is quite possibly the best lovespoon we have carved for the Eisteddfod (although we love them all) and I think that Laura and I are going from strength to strength as we perfect our designing and carving teamwork!!

The detailing on this year's spoon is exquisite! Laura spent many painstaking hours going over my crude sketches to refine the knotwork and perfect her sinuous vine details. The results of her dedication are plain to see!!!

Our little Welsh dragon strikes a brave (but not unfriendly) pose as he guards over the spoon, his tongue and tail weaving through the 4 Canadian maple leaves and 4 American stars which symbolize the international nature of the Eisteddfod. Everything is carved on both sides, so this spoon looks great both from the front, or if you hang it up wrong, from the back too!!

This may well be my favourite part of the spoon! Look at that gorgeous cherry bowl and the way the grain sweeps through it...fabulous!!! The 4 balls in the organic cage (representing the 4 years of the Eisteddfod) are a carving triumph for Laura. The detailing and finishing are perfect and I guarantee, the winner of this spoon will spend many hours rolling the little balls back and forth and enjoying the silky feel of the wooden vinework!

And here's one more look at Jen Delyth's beautiful tree of life design which she so very kindly allowed us to use as the focal point for this years Eisteddfod spoon. I think this lovely tree with its interlocking branches and leaves is the perfect symbol for our Eisteddfod lovespoon...arts and artists coming together in a spirit of cooperation to create an artwork of exceptional beauty! How sweet is THAT?

As an additional bonus...the winner of this year's spoon will also receive an exclusive copy of Chris Chandler's poem on celebrating your roots (which was the inspiration for this year's spoon) printed with a high rez graphic background designed by Jen Delyth! This is a great prize on its own!!!!

So please head to the Donate box at the top right of this page and get involved for your chance to win this beautiful spoon!! Time is ticking at a brisk rate and you'll kick yourself if that annoying neighbour of yours who always wins everything takes this home too, just because you didn't enter!!!

( NOTE ON DONATING: Go to the 'Donate' button in the right hand column on this page. A PayPal dialog page will open. Select your amount ... 1 dollar = 1 ticket in the draw ... after you make your payment you can use the memo field to indicate that your donation is for tickets in the spoon raffle. If you do not use the memo field we will assume that you are donating for a chance to win the spoon and award your tickets anyway. The draw will be held publicly at the West Coast Eisteddfod at the Multnomah Arts Center on October 13th in Portland Oregon.. The winner will receive their prize by mail unless they are present in the audience. We hope to film the draw and post the video on AmeriCymru. If you live in Portland and wish to buy tickets for the WCE please go to this page :- West Coast Eisteddfod 2012 )

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After winning last year's poetry and story telling competitions at the West Coast Eisteddfod in L.A. Chris Chandler is back for this year's event in Portland and this time he's headlining! Chris will be appearing with Paul Benoit and a full complement of backing musicians. The Chris Chandler show will also feature a "modern minstrel multi-media medicine show... and an acro-balancing troupe"! Portland's very own Kazum will be appearing on stage with Chris. Read on for more details about the show and Chris Chandler's unique blend of music, poetry and story telling. Above all...buy tickets!! You can do that here:- West Coast Eisteddfod 2012

AmeriCymru: You're appearing at this year's West Coast Eisteddfod in Portland, Oregon - this won't be the first time you've been to Portland, will it? You've got a bit of a fan following here?

Chris: Thanks Ceri. I am really looking forward to coming up for the Eisteddfod with Paul Benoit and my partner Jen Delyth. It is going to be a great evening!

I lived in Portland briefly in the early 90s. I was rambling round the country - living in a 1968 Volkswagen Micro Bus - when, as most of my stories start out: My car broke down. I had the micro bus towed to my friend Daniels house and we ran an orange extension cord from the house out to the micro bus and I lived in it for about 6 months performing on street corners in the City of Roses.

Eventually I made enough money to buy a 1976 Chevy LUV. We built a camper on the back of it. We used a domed skylight that we found in a junkyard as the roof. Wow. Those were the days. Over the years I have managed to come through Portland about twice a year - usually around the time of the Oregon Country Faire.

Chris Chandler with Paul Benoit at Shady Grove

AmeriCymru: What kind of an audience or community have you found for poets and literary performance in Portland?

Chris: I have recently had some wonderful shows at the Alberta Rose Theatre. I love Portland - city of strip bars, and peace activists, traffic and environmentalists. Misfits, miscreants, malcontents, and mischief-makers. In short: my family.

For many years I have been coming up after the Faire - which I started going to in about 96. Its kind of a prom dance for creative drop outs. The folks in the north west have really accepted me - I mean my show is - well how do you put it? Hard to pigeon hole - and as you might guess I have often had a hard time finding work. Ya, know - its not really folk music - not really poetry - not quite a play - well in Portland none of that seems to matter. It feels like a family gathering - only without the green bean casserole made of Campbells cream of mushroom soup, tinned green beans and those canned Frenchs onion rings.

AmeriCymru: Have you got anything in mind in particular for this show or anything you'd like to do this trip?

Chris: I will have a road battered suitcase (literally) full of new videos to concoct the modern minstrel multi-media medicine show. Yes - ,videos - world class americana blues and an acro-balancing troupe that will make you think twice when you go under the big top.

I am very excited to be working with my long time music partner Paul Benoit - who is an astounding songwriter in his own right - you can check out his work at www.paulbenoitmusic.com as well as my longtime friend and former music director Frankie Hernandez, and a whole wagonload of merry-makers including Portlands own Kazum! Im really looking forward to doing a contemporary take that captures the true Bardic spirit of the Welsh Eisteddfod - in a Portland kinda way!

Chris Chandler/Paul Benoit 'Thoughts on Fabric'

AmeriCymru: You competed at last year's West Coast Eisteddfod in LA, how was that?

Chris: I did!

First let me say that being Americas 2011-2012 West Coast Eisteddfod Laureate is a true honor.

My betrothed is Welsh, and I have long admired the emphasis the Welsh put upon the literary arts. And last year in LA - Hollywood no less! the competition was fierce - some of those folks were truly funny and profound - so I knew I had to bring my best work. I actually hired a coach to help me train for the contest. So I want to thank Nazelah Jeffries of the Oakland Poetry Slam for helping me prepare. Oakland will be hosting the 2014 National Poetry Slam by the way.

Nazelah helped me with my game plan - I needed it because I knew those LA boys would be hungry - they grew up on one side of the camera or the other - and they are good. In short, I was nervous - which is always good because I am at my most nervous when I am not nervous.

Stage fright is a good thing - it makes you hyper aware - I won! It really is an honor. I mean the Irish have their music, and the Scots have their Athletics - but the Welsh - they love literature - and the performing arts. I relate to the bardic tradition very much so.

I have the Plaque you presented to me proudly displayed on the wall in the room where I write. The first thing I did when I won was to spend some of that hard earned prize money on rounds of drinks for the other contestants!

AmeriCymru: You've been touring and creating for many years, can you tell us a bit about the history and development of your work?

Chris: I went to college to study - of all things stage lighting. I have always been on or around the stage - ever since my oldest brother dragged me - as a small child - to audition as his high schools mascot - the Clarkston Angoras. I am too young to remember, but I am told that I wowed the crowd by standing front in center and picking my nose and then jumping off the stage. I won the contest but was deemed to be too young to fulfill my mascot duties... but I digress.

In college I started writing plays and going out on street corners in Winston Salem, North Carolina to try out monologues - well needless to say - people thought I was crazy. So I bought a guitar in a second hand shop - now, granted I could not PLAY the guitar - so I just strummed on it while I told monologues - well, that made me a folk singer.

When I graduated (North Carolina School of the Arts) I went out auditioning for work as a lighting designer and funded my trip by playing guitar on street corners - I actually landed a job as a designer on Broadway. So it seemed I was going to have to give up the road. But I wanted to have one last hurrah at an event called The Peoples Music Network. As fate would have it, my name got drawn from a lottery, to play a song in the main show with Pete Seeger! I played a song called Watergate Generation. I got a standing ovation, and an encore. It was an amazing experience. Pete Seeger - who had always been (and still is!) a hero of mine - came back stage and encouraged me not to take that job on Broadway, but to keep playing folk music.

Much to the chagrin of my family, I continued to play music on the subways of New York.

After about 6 months of living on the road, I got on one of those trains and wound up in Boston - which is where I really learned how to turn the show into a performance - because Harvard Square (at least at that time) was the mecca of street performing in America - mimes, jugglers, magicians and dancers - oh my!

But I was not one to settle for long, and the highways took me back south to spend time in New Orleans, then Victoria, British Columbia, Austin Texas, Atlanta Georgia, Pitsburgh Pensylvannia, Washington D.C. and yes, Portland, Oregon. I feel like a Johnny Cash song Ive been everywhere....

Along the way I started getting booked in clubs like CBGB, and and Festivals like The Winnipeg Folk Festival, High Sierra Music Festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival. I did two Lollapalooza Tours - the first one playing on the second stage just before Cyprus Hill - talk about a modern minstrel show - Chris Chandler singing Republican Woodstock followed by Cypress Hill Singing Insane in the Membrane.

Not to mention the Red Hot Chili Peppers and of course Janes Addiction.

In Boston one night, my friend Rae-Linda Woad suggested that I set down the guitar. I did so and it changed my life. At the time my partner Amanda Stark (who lives in Portland now by the way) played guitar and sang beautifully. We traveled quite a bit calling ourselves Stark Raving Chandler. I remember we had been riding down the road singing songs, reading the newspaper aloud to each other and novels - Woody Guthrie Songs, The Grapes of Wrath, and the Dallas Morning News - the roads, the songs, the stories, the News all melted together into a collage. That night we put that collage on stage. Up until that moment, it had been a disinterested audience - but that collage turned the night around - and my process of creating has never been the same.

Chris Chandler/Paul Benoit at the Alberta Rose Theater Portland 2011

AmeriCymru: You've performed with Paul Benoit in the past, how did your collaboration evolve and are the two of you working on anything currently?

Chris: I have know Pauli for a long time - we met at the High Sierra Music Festival. He was playing in a band called Hanuman. Man, those guys had this groovy complex sophisticated back beat. It was all instrumental. Sometimes my friend - drummer Jarod Kaplan - would invite me to sit in and read poetry on top. It was cool. When Benoit heard I was looking for a music partner the foolish man volunteered. I drove from Baltimore Maryland to Seattle to rehearse with him. Hes that good.

His records are sublimely understated - hes easy to work with, a terrific band leaded world class musician and one of the best song writers I personally know. Our collaboration seems effortless, and he knows how to travel. Home is where the toothbrush is!

AmeriCymru: Can you tell us about other performers you've worked with?

Chris: I am lucky to have crossed paths with some of the greatest minds of my generation.

I was honored to be asked to fill out a bill one night in New York as a tribute to Abby Hoffman - with Allan Ginsberg and William Kunstler. I have opened for all kinds of folks including Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Utah Philips, Arlo Guthrie, Leo Kotae and Mojo Nixon. Folk Festivals are the best because you find yourself in these magnificent round robins. As a spoken word artist - I am kind of an odd ball - so they will put me onstage with - I dunno the nose flute player and the mime.

Once I did a round robin with Dan Bern, Joey Shit-Head from DOA playing acoustic punk- folk and John Doe from X Playing Country Acoustic. But other times ya might find yourself with The Austin Lounge Lizards and Ani Di Franco. Seriously.

Often at music festivals people ask me to come on stage with them and sit in during their show. It used to happen so often that I put an album out in the late 90s called Collaborations with a different artist accompanying me on each track. Peter Yarrow (of Peter Paul and Mary) Dan Bern, Dar Williams, Martin Sexton and Ellis Paul to name a few.

But more importantly than the Famous(or at least people you have heard of) are the ones that are far more important - I have been lucky enough to know and hang out with and do late night mind bending song swaps with some of the greatest songwriters youve never heard of. People like Danny Dollinger. If I had a dollar and if I had a quarter I would buy for you a bottle of the very best malt Liquor. A big old forty ouncer with a note that needs and answer - look me in the eyes and tell me how can you say no to love.

And do look me in the eye and tell me you dont love that lyric.

Lots of folks like the late great AL Grierson, and Anne Feeney who I was lucky enough to tour with for 5 years: Have you been to jail for Justice? I want to shake your hand. Sitting in or laying down are ways to take a stand Have you sung a song for freedom Or marched that picket line? Have you been to jail for justice? Then you're a friend of mine.

... and these are friends of mine.

Ive been so lucky that way. Brian QTN, Myshkin, Mike West and Peter Wilde, Darleen Soverign, Jason Ecklund and Steve Clark. Not exactly household names but they should be.

I have been very fortunate to work with some of the best artists I can think of. The most important is Phil Rockstroh. Rockstroh was my mentor in the early days. He is a truly great writer with keen insight. We collaborated on material together for more than a decade.

All the bands that I have had back me up have been like the dream of a demented marionette. Anne Feeney remains my heroine. We played together for 5 years as the Flying Poetry Circus - David Rovics, Samantha Parton (Be Good Tanyas) and Oliver Steck - we called ourselves Avoiding Godot. Next came The Convenience Store Troubadours with Frankie Hernandez and probably the best singer I have ever heard - let alone worked with Laura Freeman. I already told you about Stark Raving Chandler. There was Liberace Hootenanny and The Unwilling Disciples and Over the Counter Culture.

Yes, I have worked with some terrific musicians to travel the thin highways of fat america, bringing music, theatre and spoken word to the tiny taverns, picketline demonstrations, and plush theatres, from Bangor, Maine to San Ysadiro, California.

AmeriCymru: Do you have a particular process or pattern to writing? Can you tell us how you work out a performance piece?

Chris: Yea, I just open up the package. add beer. and shake.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Chris Chandler?

Chris: I am working on a show of crossover Celtic material. Perhaps talking about the immigrant experience. The story in my family is that we came here before the American revolution - by boat - Chandlers were the candle makers - from Wales to Savannah Georgia, which was a debtor colony. Many folks made those hard journeys, to drain the swamps of New Orleans. To work the mines of Pennsylvania. To make a new life in a new world. So many stories. It is intimidating though.

I go to a lot of Celtic Festivals with my partner Jen Delyth (who is a renowned Celtic artist) - and I get to hear the traditional story tellers - the Shanachies - and these guys are good - they know their material - all 3000 years of it - it makes me nervous. Which should make things interesting.

If I can find the right accompanist with a large Celtic Music repertoire (hint hint) I am excited to break some new ground!

But you know me - I am a traveling Medicine show. Its what I do - Its all I can do.

AmeriCymru: Is there anywhere, or for any audience, in particular you'd like to perform that you haven't?

Chris: Yes, I want to put together a show that can play at fringe festivals. It is a real goal of mine to one day play the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Some People wanna play Broadway - some Carnegie Hall. Me I wanna play Edinburgh.

AmeriCymru: Where can people get your work?

Chris: Ceri - the word work makes me tired! Oh, my CDs and DVDs and such... Well if you can remember my name - its Chris Chandler dot org - because I am an Organizer not a communist. ( www.chrischandler.org )
I send out a newsletter once a month - called T.H.E. .M.U.S.E.A.N.D. .W.H.I.R.L.E.D. .R.E.T.O.R.T.

I only bug ya once a month and I very rarely talk about me - I write a new piece and send it out each month as well as my dates - what cities I am coming to.

AmeriCymru: Any last words for readers of AmeriCymru?

Chris: Yes, It has been a real honor to be the 2011-2012 West Coast Eisteddfod Laureate.

AmeriCymru is bringing awareness to the contemporary bardic heart of the Welsh culture here in America. I have been to Wales a couple of times and enjoyed butty bach beer, my mother in laws lava bread, (accompanied by a Max Boyce session so Id know the true meaning of a Welsh bard!), and after listening to her collection of old welsh mining songs, I now know where Pete Seeger got his inspiration. Ill never hear the The bells of Rhymneyagain the same way.

I am a lucky guy. Mostly because I get to have such a talented artist as a partner. So my last words to AmeriCymru are - if for some reason you are unfamiliar with the mesmerizing artistry of Jen Delyth please treat yourself www.celticartstudio.com .

Thanks Ceri!

How do you say it? Iechyd da!

Or as we say it in Georgia - heres mud in your eyes!

Interview by Ceri Shaw

Singer-songwriter Fflur Dafydd is the first Oxfam Emerging Writer of the Year. The first award of its kind to be offered at the Guardian Hay Festival, the prize was announced on Saturday 23 May at the festivals Sky Arts awards dinner. Only just turned thirty last August and about to be married this August, Fflurs first novel in English, Twenty Thousand Saints has received fantastic and wide-ranging reviews including in The Guardian, Diva magazine, Western Mail and Prospect magazine, where it was 2009s pick of the year. Hay Festival director Peter Florence has been a consistent and vocal advocate of the novel, describing it as, The most compelling novel Ive read in years; a love story, a thriller, and a profound meditation on language and identity... [Fflur Dafydd ranks alongside] Sarah Waters, Kate Atkinson and Zoe Heller [in representing] the blossoming and triumphs of a whole new generation of young women writers.

Presenting the award, together with a very rare first edition hardback copy of Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird, David McCullough, Director of Oxfam said, We are very happy to work in partnership with the Hay Festival this year and congratulate Fflur Dafydd on being the first winner of our Emerging Writer of the Year Award.

Author Fflur Dafydd said, Its quite special for others to recognise in a thriller set on Bardsey island the deeper comments I wanted to make about privacy, loss, disillusion, language and identity. The Hay festival has been incredibly supportive of my writing, and warm thanks to Oxfam too!

Fflur has been publishing since she was twenty, and is a veteran of the international music and literary festival circuit. Under her belt are residencies in Helsinki, as well as performances in Croatia; Mantova, Italy; Chicago; Ireland, and the Netherlands. Fflur also took part in two sell-out events at the Hay Festival, reading with Dylan Thomas Prize Winner Nam Le, and the writer and broadcaster Jon Gower. She will now embark on a reading tour to promote Twenty Thousand Saints , appearing at the Latitude Festival, Suffolk and the Writers Reunion in Finland.

Set on Bardsey Island, the novel looks at how young women, starved of men as the boats stop bringing them, start to turn to each other for solace. It is Fflurs second novel to be set on Bardsey as the fruit of a six-week stint as writer-in-residence on the island in 2002. The first was the Welsh-language Atyniad, which was awarded the prestigious prose medal at the National Eisteddfod in 2006.

Twenty Thousand Saints is as much a lyrical romance as it is a literary novel with important things to say about the media, privacy and intrusion, the environment, discovery and national identity. Playing with cultural myths of islands, from The Lord of the Flies to Im a Celebrity Get me Out of Here, Dafydd sets up the cameras eye as witness and catalyst to how the islands female visitors degenerate one summer from delighted faux-primitivism (compost toilets!) to jungle-fever.

An unusual combination of straight and gay romance, mystery, rebellious nuns and politics (with a dry humour akin to Bernice Rubens), Twenty Thousand Saints is beautifully written with serious purpose. It is also a political book about post-devolution Wales, though that is one message that never submerges the novels lyricism or integrity of character.

Fflur Dafydd lectures in Creative Writing at Swansea University and lives in Carmarthen.

It's sounding good in my humble opinion

Cheers,

Mike