Tagged: poetry

Tony Kendrew is a poet of Welsh ancestry who has made his home in Northern California. In 2014 he completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David, the third oldest institute of higher education in Britain - after Oxford and Cambridge. He continues his connection with Wales as one of the editors of The Lampeter Review. AmeriCymru spoke to Tony about his work and future plans. Visit Tony Kendrew's website here

AmeriCymru: The poems of your new poetry collection, Turning , focus on the themes of migration and identity. What inspired this collection?

Tony: My mother was Welsh and went to China as a teacher in her late twenties. There she met and married my English father. So not only did I have to figure out where I came from, but my options were on the other side of the world!

The themes of movement and identity have concerned me all my life, and my year at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, brought them into focus like never before. So I decided to write as my MA dissertation a series of poems that reflect on the urge to migrate and explore, how that urge was expressed in my own family and life, and how it relates to a sense of place and belonging. There are twenty-two poems, and they take two directions, one towards the history of the Welsh side of my family, arranged chronologically, the other towards the nature of nationality and diaspora in general.

A number of poems tell the stories of particular members of the Welsh side of my family, trying to capture some of the characteristics of Welshness with illustrations of the delights and tragedies of family and emigration. I also touch on the influence of my cultural and genetic heritage on my own life and work.

And though the Welsh word hiraeth does not appear in these English language poems, we could say that the collection is really an exploration of hiraeth in poetic form.

AmeriCymru: Your earlier collection, Feathers Scattered in the Wind draws together reflections on the people and places of Northern California and Wales. Care to introduce that book for our readers?

Tony: I would love to. I’ve been living in Northern California since the 80's. Each time I moved it was to a more remote and beautiful place, until fifteen years ago I found the valley I now call home. All of the places I lived inspired what I suppose we could call nature poetry, though the poems aren’t just descriptive, because I always seem to find a human story hidden in the rivers and forests and deserts. And I don’t mean that my poems tell the story of the people living in those places, but that the places themselves give rise to reflections about what it is to be human. We have been living on earth for a very long time, and I think the landscape is intimately connected with our thoughts and feelings. To give an obvious example, the river: constant but changeable, deep or bickering, “wider than a mile,” you can’t push it, and of course “you can’t step into the same river twice.” And it isn’t just landscape either: sudden encounters with plants and wildlife bring insights of their own. Our minds have been sculpted by nature.

About half the poems in 'Feathers Scattered in the Wind' were written in California. The other half come from Wales. They were my responses to my year living and learning and rambling in West Wales, on the Coastal Path, in the ruins of Strata Florida or the beaches of Ceredigion.

I am, I suppose most interested in the communication of awe. The collection has a number of poems that try to communicate that response to beauty and the ineffable, whether it’s nature, or the effect of a painting on the viewer or a piece of music on the listener.

AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about your experience studying Creative Writing at the University of Wales?

Tony: Well, it was a wonderful experience! I fell into it by a stroke of serendipity, and knew immediately that the teaching style and the faculty at Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, were going to suit me just fine. The personal attention and intimacy of this small school made me feel cared for, and the sessions with poet Menna Elfyn and dramatist Dic Edwards, and regular visits from Wales’ best writers, meant that everything I wrote went under the microscope. Just what I needed! It was a lot of work, but that‘s exactly what I was there for.

AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little about 'Seven Views of the South Fork River’?

Tony: The South Fork of the Trinity River runs past the bottom of my property and has been my muse for the last fifteen years. It’s designation as a wild and scenic river means it goes up when it rains and goes down when it doesn’t – something that dams and reservoirs have hidden from the experience of a large part of the population. It is an awesome sight to watch the river rise and spread out across the valley. Some years ago I decided to sing the river’s praises with a group of poems describing places along its course. This became 'Seven Views of the South Fork River', which is embedded in the printed collection 'Feathers Scattered in the Wind'. The poems talk about the river in a blatantly metaphorical way!

AmeriCymru: What's next for Tony Kendrew?

Tony: I am currently on the editorial board of The Lampeter Review, the online magazine of the University of Wales Trinity St. David's Creative Writing Centre. It’s terrific to be at the receiving end of great writing and to be in touch with the other editors on the production of the magazine. I also write a regular piece for the magazine, a sort of letter from America, that gives a personal view of the issue’s theme or a literary topic that’s caught my eye.

I have enjoyed producing CDs of my poems and love to hear writers reading their work, but many people prefer to snuggle down with a book rather than hear poems and prose read out loud. So my next project is a book of short stories.

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

Tony: I’m delighted to be able to meet with other Welsh Americans via Americymru. As a writer I’ve been a bit of a hermit, so it’s heartening to see these connections being made through that difficult to define something that is our shared Welshness. Cymru am Byth.

AmeriCymru: Hi Elizabeth and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. Care to introduce your collection The Language of Bones for our readership?

Elizabeth: The Language of Bones: American Journeys Through Bardic Verse features Celtic-style poems that bear witness to the power of place and cultural memory. It is a poetic journey from Jamestown, Virginia, to Muir Woods, California, that gives voice to the unspoken, the overlooked, and the forgotten. As I walked along paths that bear the weight of so many triumphs and tragedies, I felt compelled to document those stories in a manner that reflected the timeless elements of the terrain. Traditional Welsh meters like the rhupunt, the clogyrnach, the cyhydedd hir, and the cywydd llosgyrnog provided such a structure and added a layer of musicality.

The topics addressed in the collection are as diverse as the American landscape. Readers will encounter Native American legends, historical events, and current events. Since we Virginians love our ghost stories, a few spirits even make an appearance! In summary, the book is an invitation to explore America, both past and present, from unusual perspectives. Copies are available from Kelsaybooks.com and on Amazon.

AmeriCymru: You write "bardic verse in the Celtic style" and you "find traditional Welsh meters particularly alluring." What is at the root of your fascination with these forms and how would you rate their contemporary relevance?

Elizabeth: Bardic verse is, of course, meant to be read aloud. For me, doing so is a transformative experience. There is something magical about hearing contemporary poetry written in Welsh forms that were codified in the fourteenth century. In some ways the rhythms are almost primal.

I should note that all of the poems in the collection are in English because that is my native language. Welsh bardic forms seem to have a universal dimension that transfers into English quite well. Perhaps rhyme and meter feed an instinctive hunger for predictable patterns.

Many contemporary poets have embraced free verse to the exclusion of all else, but I foresee a renewed interest in traditional forms. Western artistry has long celebrated balance and symmetry, and formal verse extends that aesthetic to linguistic expression. Musical culture offers a few examples of our innate preference for patterns. Just listen to people flounder when they attempt to sing the concluding note of a piece that does not end in its home key! Of course, rhyme is still prevalent in song lyrics.

I think that traditional poetic styles speak to the heart on levels beyond understanding. The trick is to make both the language and the message meaningful. Convoluted lines that engage in linguistic gymnastics for the sake of rhyme come across as contrived and awkward. Such contortions mar the beauty of the form and detract from the meaning. However, formal verse that rises to the challenge of accessibility is most certainly relevant, and a number of modern publications recognize that. Many of the poems in my collection previously appeared in literary journals in the United States and the United Kingdom. I hope that The Language of Bones will spark greater interest in conveying contemporary messages through traditional poetic forms.

AmeriCymru: “The intricate syllabic forms, cross-rhyming, internal echoes, and circular returns of Celtic verse forms are not within the competence of every poet, even those skilled in set forms, but Elizabeth Spragins shows us that they can be wielded with power and grace." Can you tell us how you became acquainted with these forms and how would you advise others to study them?

Elizabeth: I first heard the Welsh language when I happened upon a Celtic radio station that featured Siân James, a traditional folk singer and harpist. Her music had an ethereal quality that mesmerized me even though I had no idea what her words meant! That chance encounter sparked a fascination with all things Welsh. I muddled through some rather musty books on Welsh literature and had the good fortune to stumble across some excellent online resources. The Welsh Society of Fredericksburg opened other doors to me, and I was eventually invited to become a book reviewer for Ninnau, the North American Welsh newspaper. I focused on poetry written in English, and I found myself wondering why more contemporary writers did not explore the rich patterns of the 24 official Welsh meters. It was a challenge I could not resist! The age-old compulsion to tell our stories seems to cry out for the musicality of formal verse, and the Welsh meters have exciting variations that give me chills. Once I started dabbling in those literary jigsaw puzzles, I was well and truly hooked.

For those who would like to explore Welsh bardic meters in depth, I would suggest reading anthologies that include representative pieces from different time periods. With regard to the mechanics, a number of resources are available in print and online. Lewis Turco’s New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics offers a succinct description of every poetic form I have ever encountered. His work, which is international in scope, is an essential reference for any student of poetry or aspiring poet. For those ready to pick up a pen, my article “How to Write a Rhupunt (With Example)” may prove helpful.

How to Write a Rhupunt (with Example) This article details the process of writing the rhupunt, one of the traditional Welsh poetic forms.

The British Isles produced countless other bardic forms that were never codified. A broad exploration was beyond the scope of my book, but those interested in Celtic literary traditions might want to delve into the work of the Irish bards in particular. I have found Gaelic patterns especially challenging to write in English, but I do include a representative form, the rannaigheacht ghairid, in The Language of Bones.

I would caution readers that the popularity of “Celtic” elements in the film and music industries has spawned a number of books that capitalize on the popularity of the term without having a direct connection. Hence, a collection of “Celtic poetry” may have nothing to do with traditional bardic verse.

AmeriCymru: Do you have a personal favorite in your new collection? Is there one poem that stands out for you and if so why?

Elizabeth: Your question made me laugh. My answer changes daily! The technical elements of some of my earlier pieces may wobble in places, but I think that all of the stories shared in The Language of Bones are vitally important. That said, the two poems that leave me in emotional knots at readings are the ones that speak most powerfully of people and events too easily forgotten. “Jane” pays homage to an unknown girl, most likely an indentured servant, who died at Jamestown during the “starving time” of 1609-1610. “At Standing Rock” addresses racial and cultural tensions that remain unresolved as Native Americans speak in defense of the lands they hold by treaty.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Elizabeth Spragins? Any new titles, promotional readings in the works?

Elizabeth: I am thrilled to announce that Shanti Arts Publishing just released my second collection of poetry. With No Bridle for the Breeze: Ungrounded Verse explores the spirit and magic of flight through feathers, paired wings, and dreams. These poems are based on the Japanese tanka form. Additional details are available on the publisher’s website: With No Bridle for the Breeze, Elizabeth Spencer Spragins.

With No Bridle for the Breeze, Elizabeth Spencer Spragins

Another collection of my bardic verse, A Walk with Shades and Shadows, is in search of a publisher. Two other volumes are underway. At the moment my writing studio has several disorganized mountains of promising material, as well as drivel.

As for readings, I am in the process of scheduling several local events and hope to finalize details shortly.

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

Elizabeth: Thank you for taking the time to share your day with me through this interview, and thank you for supporting the beautiful elements of Welsh culture that continue to enrich the fabric of our collective heritage. Special thanks to you, Ceri, for inviting me to share my passion for Welsh bardic verse!

Sample Poem from The Language of Bones:

At Standing Rock  (A Rhupunt)

The serpent comes.
Its black blood hums
As venom numbs
The lakes and land.

No treaties hold.
The white men sold
Their word for gold
Before they manned

The hungry drill
That pierced Black Hill.
Soon oil will fill
The veins law banned.

They tunneled deep—
Black bile will seep
Where old bones sleep
In sacred sand.

At death, at birth,
Red feet kiss earth.
Her life is worth
The flames we fanned

At Standing Rock.
Our bodies block
The fangs that lock
On Mother’s hand.

Our home we hold
Despite the cold.
We will not fold
On rocks that stand.

~Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota

First published in America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience. San Francisco, CA: Sixteen Rivers Press, 2018. 95. Print.

Notes:  
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 recognized the sovereignty of the Lakota Sioux over the Great Plains “as long as the river flows and the eagle flies.” The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 prohibited white settlement in the Black Hills for all time, but the subsequent discovery of gold generated an influx of miners who violated the treaty with impunity.

The Lakota protested construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on the grounds that the project would contaminate their sole source of drinking water and disrupt their sacred lands. The completed pipeline passes under the Missouri River less than one mile upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation.

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

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.

The Welsh Poetry Competition 2017 organisers have announced the winners of the 11 ^th international competition, judged by acclaimed poet Kathy Miles , and the overall winner was Rae Howells for the poem Airlings .

The winners were as follows:

1 ^st Prize: Airlings by Rae Howells (Swansea)

2 ^nd Prize: Skimmers by Jane Burn (Consett)

3 ^rd Prize: On watching a lemon sail the sea by Maggie Harris (Llandysul)

Kathy also choose another seventeen poems for the ‘Highly commended’ section with another fifteen poems also given a ‘special mention’. As always winners came from all over the world. All winning poems and judges’ comments can be viewed on the competition web site – www.welshpoetry.co.uk

Judge Kathy Miles said: “It has been a real honour to judge this year's Welsh Poetry Competition. And, with over 500 entries, a somewhat daunting task, not least because of the quality of the work submitted. Subjects were wide ranging; love, loss, the failure of relationships, and – as one would expect in such dark political times – anger at the world we live in. Many poems dealt with heart-breaking scenarios: death, the decline of a loved one into dementia, homelessness, war, the refugee crisis. There were also many pieces that focussed on Wales, and I was reminded again of how much wonderful poetry is inspired by the history, culture and language of the landscape around us.

“Judging is necessarily a subjective process; but from the start I looked for something different. A quirky style, a new slant on an old subject, a strong narrative voice, or imagery that lifted the poem from mere description into something that truly excited the imagination. It was such a strong field that I read each entry many times before deciding on the final placings: every poet had something unique to say, and I wanted to give every poet the chance to shine. The Highly Commended poems in particular were very close, and all of an extremely high standard, so the choice was difficult.

“Inevitably, the poems which made it through were those that kept me awake at night. Poems which tugged at the edges of my dreams, or whose words huddled in little corners of my mind and leapt out when I least expected it. Well done to everyone who entered. It has been wonderful -and humbling- to see so much talent. A huge thank you to Dave Lewis for encouraging and fostering that talent and for inviting me to be the judge this year.”

Full list of winners:

WELSH POETRY COMPETITION 2017

Judged by Kathy Miles

1 ^st Prize: Airlings by Rae Howells (Swansea)

2 ^nd Prize: Skimmers by Jane Burn (Consett)

3 ^rd Prize: On watching a lemon sail the sea by Maggie Harris (Llandysul)

HIGHLY COMMENDED

4 ^th : Ten Minutes – Natalie Ann Holborow (Skewen)

5 ^th : Hare on the lane – Louise Wilford (Barnsley)

6 ^th : Sunflower Encolpion – Mara Adamitz Scrupe (USA)

7 ^th : Bergamask for the Neoplatonists – Mick Evans (Llangadog)

8 ^th : Bones, not human – Caroline Davies (Leighton Buzzard)

9 ^th : The art of moving a piano into an upstairs flat – Kittie Belltree (Cardigan)

10 ^th : lost poem – Mick Evans (Llangadog)

11 ^th : Otters – Gareth Writer-Davies (Brecon)

12 ^th : In the Bowes-Lyon Museum – Pat Borthwick (Kirby Underdale)

13 ^th : Running – Natalie Ann Holborow (Skewen)

14 ^th : Cawl – Mari Ellis Dunning (Swansea)

15 ^th : desert sculpture – Mick Evans (Llangadog)

16 ^th : Rough Magic – Noel Williams (Sheffield)

17 ^th : The Wren – John D Kelly (Newton Butler)

18 ^th : Top Corris – Zillah Bowes (Cardiff)

19 ^th : Grip – Mick Evans (Llangadog)

20 ^th : Bluebeard – Helen May Williams (Pendine)

Son of Pillgwenlly

in the former domain of

Gwynllyw Farfog

on the loquacious Usk

and the tongue-twisting old tongue

you sacked conventional work

unless to pay for your passage

eschewing the teeming path

of the Empire’s Christian soldiers

to sleep under the forever stars

in a vastness with railway arteries

and waning bison heart

you were

transatlantic

transamerican

transhuman

you wondered at Nature

the great outdoors

as you wandered

the Great Dominion

and the Great Plains

that reverence for

the unmanufactured world

always walked with you

the lines in a weathered face

telling so many histories

the detail in the hedgerow dazzling

that moment’s contemplation

of the search for

the next coin

the next smile

the next shelter

the next stanza

from you tramping and your courage

in living with physical trauma

to your single-minded campaign

to become a man of letters

the story of you is a lesson

to us in our hours of doubt

and cruel but needless isolation

The exaggerated melodrama of

the contemporary method

of delaying the announcement

of who’s been voted in or out of

this evening’s hit TV show

that pantomime pause

a menopause

by the men of pause

I’m in danger of becoming dimmed

so put me on dim watch

like most popular culture

those diversionary tactics

those big legs that carry Little Mix

blare out over the latest chapter

of this nation’s paedophile history

historical or not

what about historical abuse

that happened in historic houses?

or historical abuse

of a historical character

in a historic house?

I am not a harper

I am not a Fisher King

I am neither of these things

I am not a father

I am not a feather wing

I am neither of these things

I am not a player

I am not a fiddle string

I am neither of these things

I am not a piper

I am not a diamond ring

I am neither of these things

I am not a singer

I am not a playground swing

I am neither of these things

I am not a sinner

I am not a waspish sting

I am neither of these things

I am not a swimmer

I am not a moorland spring

I am neither of these things

I am not a winner

I am not a rifle sling

I am neither of these things

I leave this river
that nourished my upbringing
and inspired my imagining
as you arrive,
or, rather, return to its banks

in the valley where the sweat
of the labour of our forefathers
mingled with sweet meadow streams,
helping to replenish this waterway,

its stately, muscled progress,
trout breaking its surface
on warm, dreaming evenings,
in circles, those lines without end,

the flash of the kingfisher,
the seemingly stilted flight
of dragonflies,

the ancient, narrow bridges,
arches leading in,
leading out,
persisting, permitting.

The post office is not where it used to be

but the original building still stands

now with a different purpose

with the proud insignia of its past

betraying its creation myth

the clocks not synchronised

at midnight on New Year

everything playing at once

nothing changes

Jimmy Jangles has been a has been

and now does not know where he is

he hates days when there is no

scheduled postal delivery

and that some men think

of lesbians only in voyeuristic terms

he has failed to download the app

of elegies he required

so he finds himself

rearranged out of the town

in which he was born

walking a triangle of sodden fields

to the nods of starlings

Unsuspected cemetery

its thousand year sand graves

sifted away by storm

revelation

they had lived clasped

by the shore

and by the sea

vigorous and self-assured

that margin

on their oceanic trade routes

of exchanged objects

and the latest news from

beyond the dolphin-drawn horizons

of kings and their retinues

the gossip of far-flung tribes

precious stones and

famous sunsets

the bones of the infants

unusually survived

loved in the cuddle

of the cist

laid down with seared hearts

they said their toes pointed inwards

bunched that way

by the embrace of

disappeared shrouds

Americymru: Your first published collection of poems Lull of The Bull has been very well received and reviewed. Do you have any further works in preparation?

Paul: I am currently working on another collection of poems, provisionally entitled "My Enclave". I hope that this will appear in the summer of 2011. It will be a more claustrophobic, introspective, partisan and surgical work than my debut.

Americymru: Care to explain the significance of the title - "Lull of The Bull"?

Paul: Firstly, I consider it to be internal poetry in a small way in itself, almost musical in a Middle Eastern by way of West Wales route. Secondly, I live in a rural area and am of farming ancestry but have no practical experience of this former family lifestyle like many of my contemporaries though we are surrounded by farms our families used to own. Thirdly, it could be a comment on artificial insemination, emasculation, enforced celibacy and the changing roles of both genders, more pertinently the male in this case. Essentially, I don't really know. I just write the stuff, waiting for shapes to appear in a log jam of words. I like the look and sound of it like a magpie might. I prefer the reader to reach his or her own conclusions.

Americymru: For my money one of the most interesting and powerful poems in the collection is:- "I Opened My Mouth and Set Free Twenty Thousand Demons Who Had Accompanied Me Thus Far" Can you tell us a little more about the poem?

Paul: This poem is the result of a planned one hour session of instant writing, all the baggage of that moment saved up for one Friday midnight. This partly explains its apparent randomness and disconnectedness and it is a precursor of much of my present favoured method of writing. The title refers to a cathartic process which is ongoing. I guess that some of what I write makes no linear sense which is how I and the Druids like it.

Americymru: I must ask you about 'Bombstar' . A great poem and a strong lyric. Was it written with musical adaptation in mind? Do you plan to adapt more of your work in the future?

Paul: "Bombstar" was not written with musical adaptation in mind. I would like to collaborate with more songwriters as I feel this is an exciting way of presenting my words.

Americymru: What significance does 'Y Gododdin' have for you personally and in your writing?

Paul: That epic poem speaks to me of a different, heroic age. It describes a glorious, doomed raid on the invader at a time when Wales could have been independent had it been united or even existed, a recurring theme. I don't dream of going back there that often but sometimes feel an outsider in my own land . The stylised depictions of weapons, armour and carnage have informed some of my own imagery as has my own personal collection of edged weapons, itself a response to that age, that poem.

Americymru: On your website there are a number of short stories. Is this a genre that you plan to explore further?

Paul: I am interested in exploring the short story genre more fully. Ultimately I'd like to publish a collection of short stories but that's some time off.

Americymru: What's next for Paul Steffan Jones?

Paul: I intend finishing "My Enclave" as soon as possible and ensure it doesn't turn into a sort of "Gangster Gododdin"! I am experimenting in poems culled from excerpts from magazines. I'm eager to resume writing in Welsh. I will be involved in industrial action against Government cutbacks soon, no doubt. I hope to pick up a long story called "Lovetown" I'm not writing and do more photography, using it differently. I have a number of poetry readings in Pembrokeshire in the coming months and have ambitions to take the poems overseas. Oh, and some romance and adventure would not go amiss, either.

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

Paul: Lull of the Bull is available at starbornbooks.co.uk . I'm glad to be on Americymru and am delighted at the interest shown in my country. I am a Welsh speaker and am happy to receive communications in that language.

Welsh poet Paul Steffan Jones won this year's (2012) West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition with his entry  When You Smile You'll Be A Dog No More . Read the winning entry below. AmeriCymru spoke to Paul about his winning entry and about his work in general.

AmeriCymru: Congratulations/Llongyfarchiadau on winning the 2012 West Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition and many thanks for agreeing to talk to AmeriCymru. Your poem 'When You Smile You'll Be A Dog No More' was the winning entry. Care to tell us more about the poem?

Paul: Diolch. I am delighted to have won this competition. The poem is a reaction to the death of my mother in July 2011, the Gleision mining disaster later that same year and the 1938 murder of my Treherbert ancestor Thomas Picton by Spanish war criminals. It deals with grief and how it affects the personality and one's core beliefs.

AmeriCymru: How would you describe your relationship with words, with the raw matter of your craft?

Paul: My relationship with words has become more flexible, more trusting over the last two years. I am favouring a partly abstract approach to writing because I feel that what's going on at present in the UK doesn't make much sense and it's my job to reflect that feeling of nonsense to some degree in my work. It's good I feel to deconstruct a narrative so much that the narrative disappears leaving the naked and mad beauty of words that seem not to belong together but somehow work against the odds. I allude to this in When You Smile You'll Be a Dog No More. It is even more challenging when reading this type of poem to an audience. I believe it's important to try to find new ways of conveying messages, creating tension and provoking reaction.

AmeriCymru: Your blog features a number of original works. Will they be anthologised? How satisfactory/useful are digital media for poets?

Paul: Some of my blog writings have appeared in collections and others may do so in the future. I have found that having a blog has provided me with feedback that I would not otherwise have had. It provides additional encouragement in a fairly lonely genre.

AmeriCymru: Your first anthology Lull Of The Bull was published by Starborn Books. Where can readers obtain a copy?

Paul: A small number of copies of Lull of The Bull are available at www.starbornbooks.co.uk and a few book shops in West and South Wales.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Paul Steffan Jones?

Paul: My second collection, The Trigger-Happiness, will be published by Starborn Books in the next few weeks. A third collection, Junk Notation, has already been written, a reaction to relationship breakdown, poems punctuated by short stories. I am working at the moment on a potential book called Ministry of Loss which again deals with grief and also the massive population change in rural Wales since the 1960s. I look forward to taking The Trigger-Happiness to a wider audience. I hope that one of its poems will feature in an exhibition in Kyoto, Japan next month.

I will continue to fight the UK Coalition Government's austerity measures from within the ranks of the Trade Union movement.

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

Paul: There are a lot of good but unknown poets in West Wales who deserve to be heard. I'm sure that a similar situation exists in the U.S.A. I would like there to be closer links between lesser-known Welsh and American poets.

When You Smile You'll Be A Dog No More

I wake up

I wake up dead

I had been dreaming of cardboard

home made signs on unclassified roads

which directed me to 20,000 saints

or 20,000 whores

its hard to decide

everything is everything else

nothing is nothing

let me sleep

my bed my kingdom

Im sick of having to make sense

if theres still such a thing

the holes and the cracks

that await filling or recognition

our father gives us brown envelopes

containing our mothers careful accretion

we have all done loot

I will glory in her memory

decorate those who have managed

to live to retirement age

who have lived before death

I am overdue a bombweed and overgrown motte

Grand Tour

with a redundant cinema gravedigger hunchback

to disinter Nazis to kill them all over again

the art of leaning on a farm gate to view

wood lice jigs

the tail end of a hurricane

mould and its cousins

fungicide and its offspring

cry when miners die in the sides of hills

in the tombs of the underworld

in the caress of water

cry when they say your name

when the pain overpowers

when the clues expire

cry as men cry

faces to the wall

the tears of candles

the clowns of town down

the anti-condensation flotilla at full tilt

freelance apologists freely lancing

cwtsh into the huddle

taste her tears so near

impressing me as much

as I had expected

but not in the manner anticipated

women with bruised faces

the views from floors

fight for your smile

you know the one

and I will fight for the right to fail

and the secrets we think we are keeping

removing my shirt though its cool

nakedness of diaphragm

for what I am

the long arms of brambles through fencing

Impressionist paintings in river reflections

the source of the Nile

the source of fibre

persisting with bent nibs

everybody lies

everybody smells

everybody disappoints

this towns got much to answer for

eat what you are

food replaces sex

those poached brains

shopping as sport

lions as lambs

distance will bring us together

Paul Steffan Jones

Interview by Ceri Shaw

AmeriCymru:  Hi Sian. You won the West Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition 2015 with your submission - 'Cynghanedd'. What can you tell us about this poem?

Sian: This is one of very few poems that I've written in English. The simple fact that I was writing in my second language gave me the freedom to be somebody else. Not that I don't write persona poems in Welsh, but the language gives an added distance from "me". Last year the Welsh literary scene was, mainly through Llenyddiaeth Cymru/Literature Wales, dominated, for better or worse, by the Dylan Thomas celebrations and I think that made me curious about the thoughts and feelings of Welsh writers who don't write in Welsh and who feel that that tradition, and cynghanedd as it ' s most extreme and obvious example, is not relevant to them. However the voice in the poem finds in the end that he can't quite escape its power. "Ni allaf ddianc rhag hon" in other words, though I was not thinking of T H Parry-Williams’ Hon at the time.  
 
AmeriCymru: When did you first become interested in writing poetry? Where can readers go to find more of your work either in print or online?

Sian: I wrote in primary school, where I had the amazing, amazing good fortune of having Gerallt Lloyd Owen as my teacher when I was eight years old. There was then a long gap (I'd gone to study science s and didn't consider myself a writer), but I started to write again as I was approaching thirty. My first and so far only volume of poetry was published in 2013 ( Trwy Ddyddiau Gwydr , Gwasg Carreg Gwalch), and was on the shortlist for Welsh Book of the Year.

AmeriCymru: You recently participated in the 'Welsh Enemies' project. Care to tell us more?

Sian: I took part in two evenings as part of this project (there were many evenings across Wales and one in London). Basically poets worked in allotted pairs to fill an allotted time slot, but were given no further guidelines. I worked with Karen Owen, a very talented Welsh language poet, for the evening in Bangor, and, as we both happened to be there at the time, did a slot with my partner, Siôn Aled, for the London evening (I read Cynghanedd that night, though it hadn't been written specifically for that event). Working with someone else always forces you to do something in a slightly different way than if you'd been left to your own devices, which is an odd mixture of fun and scary.

AmeriCymru: In addition to writing poetry you have also written novels for children and a Welsh language novel 'Yn Y Tŷ Hwn'. Can to tell us a bit more about these?

Sian: Yn y Tŷ Hwn was my first novel for adults and I was pleasantly surprised at the positive reaction to it. It was chosen by the Wales Literature Exchange to be in their "bookcase" that year. In other words a book that they promote to foreign publishers as suitable for translation. So far no takers! But they have a description of it on their site if anyone wants to find out more about it  http://waleslitexchange.org/ en/books/view/yn-y-ty-hwn

I've written four novels for children, Pwysig, Maestro, Chwaer Fawr Blodeuwedd and Gwaith Powdr , as well as contributing to other books. Gwaith Powdr http://www.gwales.com/ bibliographic/?isbn= 9781848517028&tsid=3 is the latest, based on an old abandoned explosives factory which is now a nature reserve near my home in Penrhyndeudraeth. When I first went there when I moved here five years ago I knew I wanted to write about it, and I'm not sure if I'm finished with it - it might turn up in something else in the future.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Sian Northey?

Sian: Sometime in the first half of next year there will be another novel for adults published (title still undecided!). It follows a father and daughter who have not been in touch until the daughter is thirty and pregnant. It's taken me ages to write - I was suffering badly from "second novel syndrome"!

For the next couple of months I'll be busy translating Alys Conran's wonderful debut novel, Pigeon , from English to Welsh. http://www.gwales.com/ bibliographic/?isbn= 9781910901236&tsid=5

Published by Parthian, we think that this is the first time that a novel will be published in both Welsh and English at the same time.

I also enjoy holding writing workshops, for both adults and children, and have recently been informed that I've been awarded some money as part of Literature Wales' celebration of the Roald Dahl centenary to hold workshops with prisoners. I'll be helping them to write stories for their children at home.  
 
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?

Sian:   Simply diolch yn fawr for the interest shown in my work and all the best for 2016 be you writers, artists, gardners, parents, builders, musicians, carers, teachers, dancers, nurses...  There are worrying things happening in the world but perhaps the small things we do - read a poem in translation, cook a dish from an unfamiliar culture - will create an atmosphere where we can celebrate the differences between us and not be frightened by them. 

I never did understand

the Aran jumper rules

that cable knit their lines

in fussy convoluted Fairisle stanzas.

Experts dug through documentaries - subtitled, scratching.

I doubted when they claimed

to have found a piece,

peat pickled,

perfect,

somewhere to the north of junction forty five.

A sweater sleeve

that you or I could wear

they said,

as they stretched it back to shape

on harp strings.

It dripped its dirty water

as it dried,

and in that, the puddles on linoleum,

I saw the beauty.

Fresh from the success of his first novel, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Welsh writer Dave Lewis has returned to poetry for his sixth book Haiku , and produced a fine collection of over 300 modern verses. The book was written over the last few years and is split into four sections under the headings Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

Reviews

"Dave Lewis is a unique voice in the poetry world. His new collection is filled with a range of vivid, often quirky, word pictures. He is adept at making every word count. Despite its brevity, the haiku is anything but an easy option at its best, this short and fairly formal poem should make the reader look anew at an everyday event. This Dave does to perfection, for example, "Chain gangs of electricity/on the green mountain/armies marching". His haiku dont always conform to the traditional 5,7,5 syllable format he goes his own original way, as in a favourite of mine, "Consultants waiting room/the plant in the window/dead". Who else would have the temerity to finish on that single-beat word, dead? His thought-provoking images have some surprising last lines that take your breath away and will remain with the reader for a long time." - Moira Andrew

"Unconventional, unapologetic, unpretentious! Dave Lewis' Haiku gives us an interesting taste of outside-the-box thinking and reminds us that while we breathe, we can embrace change, bend the rules and though we walk the same path as many others before us, we can make our own tracks." - Jolen Whitworth

Dave is from Pontypridd, has published five previous books and also runs the international Welsh Poetry Competition.

To buy a copy just visit Daves web site, or go to Amazon, Waterstones or other good booksellers.

Authors web site www.david-lewis.co.uk

Peter Thabit Jones was born in Swansea, Wales, Great Britain, in 1951. His work, particularly his poetry for children, has been featured in books from publishers such as Penguin, Puffin Books, Letts Educational, Macmillan Educational, Heinemann Educational, Oxford University Press, Simon and Schuster, Heinemann Centaur (South Africa), Scholastic Publications (Australia), and Titul Publishers/ British Council Moscow (Russia). The latter was a major British Council Moscow educational project to teach English to secondary school children throughout Russia.His poem Kilvey Hill has been incorporated into a permanent stained-glass window by the leading Welsh artist Catrin Jones in the new Saint Thomas Community School built in Swansea, Wales, which was officially opened in July, 2007.

Peter has been invited back to America in May 2009. He will carry out a a series of poetry readings and literary talks in New York, where he will be hosted by Professor Sultan Catto of City University of New York, The Graduate Center, and his American publisher Stanley H. Barkan.

Whilst in New York he will also participate in a new project with Stanley, who is planning to produce a dvd based around the popular 'Walking Guide of Dylan Thomas's Greenwich Village' , written by Peter and Aeronwy Thomas, Dylan's daughter, which was commissioned by Catrin Brace of the Wales International Center, New York in May 2008. Peter will produce a narrative contribution and Swansea singer-songwriter Terry Clarke, a frequent participant at The Seventh Quarry/Cross-Cultural Communications Visiting Poets Events, will sing original songs and compose the incidental music.

Peter Thabit Jones is also the judge of the 'Left Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition'.

,,,

Americymru: Where else in the US are you visiting this year?

Peter: Firstly, I have literally just returned from the World Conference in Boulder, Colorado. I was visiting poet for ten days. I had a truly wonderful time, spent with a variety of leading creative people from around the world (a filmmaker, cowboy singer-songwriter, jazz musicians, politicians, Irish storyteller, scientists, journalists etc.) on stimulating debating panels and I also read my poems whilst there.

In mid-May I go to New York, as visiting poet, sponsored by Professor Sultan Catto of CUNY, The Graduate Center, New York, and Stanley H. Barkan, my New York publisher (Cross-Cultural Communications). I will be giving readings and talks, including a major event at the Mid-Manhattan Library, whilst there. I will also be involved in the making of a celebration dvd built around the 'Dylan Thomas Guide to Greenwich Village', which I wrote with Aeronwy, his daughter, for the Wales International Centre, New York. The dvd is being produced by my New York publisher, who came up with the idea, and will feature original songs about Dylan by singer-songwriter Terry Clarke, and a group of Cross-Cultural Communications- published poets from across America.

Americymru: Do you set out to write a collection for publication, or do you simply write and eventually gather up the ones that seem to go together?

Peter: I tend to write poems in batches and eventually shape them into a collection, Usually, my final choice is powered by poems that seem to fit into certain themes, such as childhood, people etc. However, my last book, The Lizard Catchers, was a kind of Selected Poems for the American market and it comprises poems taken from my books published in Britain.

Americymru: Is poetry a priestly calling for all poets, or just a few? Im thinking of The Priest-Poet R.S. Thomas.

Peter: I think it is for the true poet. R.S. said, 'Poetry is religion, religion is poetry' and I think he was echoing Wordsworth's 'priest-like task'. Poetry for me is a vocation, like the priesthood, and I certainly believe a poet can have - to quote St John of the Cross - 'a dark night of the soul', when he doubts the importance of poetry, in the same way some priests go through moments of doubt about their faith. Alternatively, a true poet can experience visions of eternity. I am, in fact, a real admirer of R.S. Thomas's work.

Americymru: Are poets born or made?

Peter: Well, John Clare, echoing Horace I believe, said 'A poet is born not made'. However, we have Edward Thomas, the First World War poet ( he's of Welsh descent and gave his three children Welsh names), who started writing poems around the age of 37 years at the suggestion of the American poet Robert Frost. Thomas had written quality prose for decades and Frost pointed out that some of the passages were ideal for turning into poems. I have taught potential poets for sixteen years at the Adult Education Department at Swansea University. I think the hardest thing is to develop an individual vision and poetic voice. Maybe one is born with those two vital things.

Americymru: When you teach writing, whats the most important thing you want your students to apprehend and incorporate in their writing efforts?

Peter: I try to get over a real sense of the importance of craft. Vernon Watkins, Dylan Thomas's much under-rated friend, said, 'Cold craftsmanship is the best container of fire': an important statement. It's craft that takes over from that initial and exciting spurt of inspiration. I cover metre and poetic devices and try to get over the importance of the musical aspect of poetry, 'the colour of saying', to quote Dylan Thomas.

Americymru: Post-modern cool poets write in free verse. Why do you choose rhyme & metre? Did you choose them, or did they choose you? Why do you like the traditional styles so well?

Peter: It's possible we chose each other. I think it is because I believe passionately in the music of poetry, the sound as much as the sense. It's also, of course, a Welsh thing: Dylan, the Welsh-language bardic poets. I was lucky in the 1980s when I met the Welsh-language poet Alan Llwyd, the cynghanedd master, who taught me quite a bit about cynghanedd devices. He won the Chair and the Crown twice at Royal National Eisteddfods. I also think the rubber band of poetry can be stretched to take in all kinds of poems. For me, though, if I write free verse I try to sound-texture it with poetic devices. When I toured America last year (and at Colorado a few weeks ago) it was something people pointed out time and time again: the musical quality of my poems, which for me was rewarding when it was noted.

I like the traditional styles because I see them as an adventure rather than a strait-jacket.

Americymru: Why do you think landscape is such an important witness and mnemonic device for you? How do you think it holds memory the way youve depicted it Im thinking of Kilvey Hill and the Lions Head here?

Peter: My first memory is of landscape. I recall, as a toddler, looking through the open kitchen door of my Grandmother's home (she and my Grandmother raised me) and seeing this huge, sulking shape dominating every thing: Kilvey Hill. As soon as I was old enough to explore it, I explored every corner of it. For me, Kilvey and the landscape of Eastside Swansea (Dylan's ugly side of his 'ugly, lovely town' - luckily for me he did not write about it!) confirms a pantheistic belief in me that we are connected to nature (The force that through the green fuse drives the flower). Kilvey Hill is also, for me, the touchstone to that reality that down the years has changed into a memories: my first bonfire night, first gang of boys, first camping out experience, first love etc. I have just finished, after ten years of working on it, a verse drama, The Boy and the Lion's Head, based on my Lion's Head poem and my grandfather's experiences as a soldier on the Somme. It is about the impact of a grandfather's stories and a particular landscape (the industry-spoilt Eastside Swansea) on a boy's imagination.

I am very excited by it and two American friends have been very, very enthusiastic about it.

Americymru: How many years of your life do these poems in The Lizard Catchers cover?

Peter: From adolescence (My Grandfather's Razor) to poems written recently (Night, The Green Bird), whilst in my mid-fifties.

Americymru: How long did it take you to find your voice as a poet?

Peter: A long time. The turning point for me was a deep personal grief in my life, the death of my second son, Mathew. I did not write for a long time. When poetry came back to me I knew I could not fall back on someone else's voice or experiences. To be honest, though, I think it is only in the last twelve years that I have really started to understand and use, as I would like to, my own voice. My dear friend and mentor, Vince Clemente, a New York poet and critic (an expert on Walt Whitman) has helped me immensely since we first started corresponding in 1997 and showing each other poems-in-progress.

Americymru: Why do you think it is that you can see so deeply into the world? Do you think this is a native ability or did you have to cultivate it?

Peter: Even as a small boy I was curious about the reality of things, the depth of experiences. Also, my only memories of my grandfather are of him, seriously unwell, in a bed in our parlour. I think such nearness to death at such a young age makes one really focus on life, the living things. The part of the landscape of Wales where I was born and raised offered so much to focus on, Kilvey Hill, the nearby (then) busy docks, the beach, and the (then) seaside town of Swansea. As I got older I read famous poets, such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, R.S., Ted Hughes, and I soon realised I was not alone in wanting, almost needing, to see 'shootes of everlastingness' beyond the curtain of reality. So I suppose I 'cultivated' my inborn strengths. They say the Welsh are a curious people and I certainly have that trait.

Americymru: What is it about the little things and passing vignettes of life that catch your attention?

Peter: I think the little things are all revelations of the big things, thus when observing soemthing like a frog or a lizard one is observing an aspect of creation, a thing that is so vital and part of the larger pattern that none of us really understand. Edward Thomas said, 'I cannot bite the day to the core'. In each poem I write I try to get closer to the core of what is reality for me, be it the little things or the big things such as grief and loss.

Americymru: When you write, do you write a poem and then pare it down to its bones, or, do the bones come first?

Peter: For me the bones come first, a word, a phrase, a line, or a rhythm, usually initiated by an observation, an image, or a thought. Then once I have the tail of a poem I start thinking of its body. Nowadays, within a few lines I know if it will be formal or informal. If it is formal, all my energies go into shaping it into its particular mould, a sestina or whatever. If it is informal, I apply the same dedication. Eventually after many drafts, a poem often then needs cutting back because of too many words, lines or ideas. R.S. indicated that the poem in the mind is never the one on the page, and there is so much truth in that comment. The actual writing of a poem for me is the best thing about being a poet: publication, if possible, is the cherry on the cake.

Americymru: You have such an elegant and clean style; how did you develop it?

Peter: Thank you,. I think from reading and studying the great poets, especially the Welsh ones (R.S., Dylan T., Vernon Watkins and Merthyr-born Leslie Norris) and the Irish ones (Yeats and Heaney). I also believe a poem should last for more than one reading, that a reader should be able to enter a poem again and again and get some thing from it. So, again, I think if I have such a style it is connected with my commitment to craft.

Americymru: You paint such impressionistic word-pictures the way you hyper-focus on little details and hang the whole rhythm of the poem on them. Can you remember how old you were when you first encountered Monet, and what the process was for you to acquire that same technique he had in paints, for yourself with words?

Peter: I first encountered a painting by Monet in a library book (I joined Swansea Central Library when I was sixteen, mainly to take out poetry books) and the real thing on a school trip to the National Museum in Cardiff. Again, I think by carefully focusing on the little things, and by trying to choose the right words to convey, indeed replicate, a visual experience, you can present a larger picture. Robert Frost (I'm paraphrasing) said that one first had to be provincial to be universal. Also, in the Welsh-language they talk of a poet 'being a master of the exact word', the ability to choose the right and only word. It was a single word rainbow in the Welsh poet W.H. Davies's The Kingfisher that started me writing at the age of eleven. My teacher at Danygraig Boys' School, a superb teacher called Mr. James, read out the poem to the class. The opening line did it for me, 'It was the rainbow gave thee birth'. I could not believe that one single word could convey so much. It lit up in my mind and kick-started my love of language, my love of the wonder and magic of words. Seamus Heaney said, 'Words are doors themselves' and I love that possibility, that way of using them.

Americymru: In Psalm for the Twentieth Century you talk about what a sacrilege were committing on everything that is sacred. Is there something about that desecration you see, that makes the planet more blessed? Can environmental degradation somehow bestow blessings? One line really stood out Blessed is the child that the city drives wild. Do you think the cities bring out the native wildness in children, or do they shatter it? Do you think that the urban wilderness can give us mad and prophetic poets like Lailoken and Taliesin?

Peter: I think as one gets older, certainly for me, the world becomes more incredible, my part in it so insignificant; and, despite what we are doing to it, it is still full of wonders and I do try to see the loveliness amongst ugliness, and the ugliness amongst the loveliness. So I do see the blessings. I think in that line about the child I was thinking of both things: that the packed, impersonal city can impact dreadfully on a child's physical and mental being, and, of course, it can push them into using their innate survival equipment in order to survive.

Well, poets like Allen Ginsberg certainly faced many of the obvious problems of modern life in a very individual and impressive way. I think good poets, whether country-based or city-based, attempt as best as they can to respond to their immediate surroundings, and, yes, many are prophetic in their own way. As Wilfred Owen said, 'All a poet can do today is warn.

Americymru: How did you get the job working with special needs children, why did you take it, and did it change or enhance the way you see the world?

Peter: I was a freelance writer and I was doing a lot of work in schools, colleges etc. The opportunity came up to learn sign language on a college course (I used to ride a motorbike - my first one at the age of thirty something - from Swansea to Barry College, very scary and exciting). Then from that came the opportunity to do work with special needs children. I took it because I wanted to experience a world beyond my world, a world unknown to so many of us. It changed me in that it changed my perceptions of their world, their daily problems, their incredible bravery, and, at times, sheer tenacity. I'm sure, as with all ultimately rewarding and humbling experiences, it contributed to the way I see the world.

Americymru: The themes in The Lizard Catchers childhood and its traumas, the relationships of children to adults and vice versa, the loss and grief they inflict on each other, illness, death, mortality, urban ruin and the omnipresence of Nature even in the pit of industrialization make this a very emotional collection. If our humanity is the connecting thread, then do you really think its possible to re-arrange the beads on the rosary as it were, to get them all to make sense?

Peter: I certainly believe our humanity is the connecting thread. We all share these things, childhood, relationships, grief, the environmental demise of our world etc. We are all, ultimately, very fragile. One of the panels at the World Conference in Boulder, Colorado, was titled Death: Go Gentle into that Good Night, and one of my contributions was that if we all actually considered our own mortality more often then maybe we would be nicer to each other.

These things, though, don't occur in sequence, For example, some experience death very early in life, others very late in life. So it is often difficult to get them to make sense, in a logical, a rosary-bead way. Again, getting older places some of them in more of a context and a kind of acceptance that starts to make sense.

Americymru: Why do you think grief makes all the little things stand out so starkly? Why, or how, does it cause the hyper-focusing that comes out in your poems?

Peter: Because it is such a cliff-edge thing, a paring down to the real basics, the real essence of what we are: fragile and naked. You see this in the big tragedies, world wars, 9/11 etc. People suddenly focus on what really matters, the little things, and they focus more deeply. Many soldiers in the First and Second Worlds Wars suddenly started writing poems, men who had never written one in their lives. When we find ourselves in the the cold corner of grief, the cul-de-sac of shock, the little things seem to light up, be of more importance: a child's smile, a friend's hug etc. The playwright Dennis Potter said in one of his last interviews, before dying of cancer, that the blossoms in his garden seemed to be more bright than they ever were. In my poems, the little things are a kind of reassurance, a kind of confirmation of a small pattern in the bigger pattern of it all.

Americymru: Is childhood really that terrifying an experience for a majority of people, do you think? Im thinking of the Boy and the Lions Head and The Protest.

Peter: Probably not. But I do think children experience fears of what is not understood, such as the boy in the poem about the strange man and the Lion's Head. The Protest is one way of me looking at my not having my real parents as a child. It's not, of course, as emotional or as powerful as John Lennon's Mother.

Americymru: So, Seamus Heaney has been known to praise Eminems rap-poetry. Any thoughts on that, on rap as a poetic form born of urban ruin, and on where that might fit into a 1000 year old poetic tradition?

Peter: I can understand Seamus Heaney's praise for Eminem, certainly the musical quality. I have always liked Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, probably the first 'rap song'. At the World Affair Conference I shared the stage several times with Lynne Johnson, a young female Hip Hop poet from New York, who was really great, engaging, musical and exciting. Rap seems the ideal response of young people to urban ruin and I'm sure the form will snuggle into its rightful place in poetic tradition.

Americymru: Wildness and Nature always seems to overcome our best efforts to cage, encrust, or otherwise tame it. Why do you think so many people, and the modern world as a whole, think they can best it? What is it about people, do you think, that they just have to keep trying at that?

Peter: Well, man has to dominate, not just nature but each other. Man strives to be godlike and getting nature/wildness under his thumb maybe confirms that side of his ego. Maybe there is an element of envy too, the freedom of an eagle in the sky, the sheer force of a river, the dignity of a mountain. Modern man has also lost his respectful relationship with nature. Pre-literate people understood and appreciated the preciousness of the world they inhabited, that they were mere brief visitors to the Earth, protectors of it for the generations to come.

Americymru: Do you think mankind can save ourselves from our own bloodthirsty destructive tendencies, and if so, how do you think were going to be able to do it?

Peter: I hope so but one feels so pessimistic for so much of the time. Materialism seems to gnaw away at our sanity, fool us into not wanting to see what damage we are actually doing. We have to try to do something for future generations, our grandchildren and their children and so on. To achieve changes, we have to consider this whole business of materialism, this 'fast food' approach to everything, this 'I want, so I must have' mentality. Maybe mankind will arrive at a cliff-edge that cannot be ignored, a natural or man-made catastrophe that will stop everything in its tracks: and then force a real change in things.

Americymru: Are we going to destroy ourselves do you think, or will Nature beat us to the punch?

Peter: A big question again. I hope no-one is mad enough to set off the first bonfire of vanity that will mean our mutual annhilation. Our daily destruction of the actual planet is probably a bigger threat and one we cannot ignore forever. Nature, of course, can happily get on without us.

Interview by Kathleen O'Brien Blair

Secret Life Of A Postman is the first collection of poetry from award winning novelist Lloyd Jones. The book is dedicated to, "the members of AmeriCymru and the Welsh in America".

...

About Lloyd Jones

Lloyd Jones is an award-winning novelist in English and Welsh. He lives on the North Wales coast near Bangor.

His first novel, Mr Vogel, (Seren 2005) won the McKitterick first novel award and was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. His second novel, Mr Cassini (Seren 2006) won the Wales Book of the Year prize. In 2009, he published his first collection of short stories, My First Colouring Book (Seren). He was chosen to contribute to Seren Books’ acclaimed series reimagining the Mabinogion, the original source of the legendary King Arthur story cycle, with See How They Run (New Stories from the Mabinogion Seren 2012), a retelling of “Manawydan, Son of Llyr”. He published his first Welsh language novel, Y Dwr (Y Lolfa 2010) to critical acclaim. and followed that with Y Daith (Seren 2011). He translated Y Dwr into English as Water (Y Lolfa 2014).

Lloyd Jones is the first person to have walked completely around Wales, a 1,000-mile journey, on foot.

...

Poems From 'Secret Life'

...

Size matters

For instance we can''t imagine what it''s like
To be Russian, we''ll never know
What it''s like to live in a country
With an unassailable language
And a monumental culture spreading
Across nine time zones,
So much space it drives men mad.
We''ve just the one field in Wales,
Small and green, with a copse of myths
And a boggy bit in the middle;
An apple tree and a pig,
A church and twelve chapels, also
A hut which is home to three anchorites,
Two of them devising the country''s history
Always a little faster than the third can read it;
And there''s always a gang
Drilling for something by the gate,
Forever a promise of gold or maybe
Yet more mud.

...

Mawddach Bridge

for Brynley Jenkins

Meet me on the Mawddach in the spring,
When the sapphire tide spins seawards:
Sewin streams on either shore will flee the land
Sucked hellbent to the river’s restless floor.
Meet me on the footbridge [fallopian in the water’s womb,
Childbrace on the chill white waveteeth] –
Come sundrunk when the sea’s draconian whisper
Drowns their hillside hymns, those believers before us.
Easily we will cross our pagan gantry,
Lopsided woodhenge, lollipop sticks impertinent in the sand.
Meet me on a sad day by Dysynni, seditious with longing;
We will muster a bluster of April dog-winds
To shepherd sunshine down Cader Idris
And chase spindrift clouds along the raven ridges,
Through unshakable shadows, vast in the valley’s ravines.
At nightfall when we part [not mournfully]
Arawn will chalk a cross, other-worldly, on our walkway to Annwfn:
Footmarks for actors, cues from a ghost.
In the estuary’s amphitheatre, amphibious
We will face her foothills, blinded by sunset’s footlights.
Stagestruck, we will hear the invisible tribes
With their faint dogs sidle through side doors
Leaving Wales: wind, wood and water to our own devising.
Their shadows will move fleetingly, avoidingly, to another time
When the two of us will meet again, on the bridge at Mawddach.

,,,

A Review By John Good

...

If you were a writer of fiction (stories short and long, novels, scripts ac ati), or non-fiction (biography, history, science, learned essays ac ati), you could hide behind the narrative, equations, characters and your own intellect or not, but if you write poetry you can’t. The poet (his life experience/relationships, belief or disbelief system, mood(s), mental state(s), interests/obsessions/politics ac ati) will shyly or brazenly stand more or less trouserless right next to meaning, novelty of thought, metaphor, expression, voice and wordcraft. In other words, poetry is the poet. Having said that, the fascination of the art is in the extraordinary variety and often esoteric if not arcane sensibilities of its more interesting exponents.

But bullpucky or cachu rwtsh aside, if the poet isn’t interesting in her/himself then we can only hope for something like clever metaphor and dispassionate observation. You won’t find any of that in Secret life of a Postman. Dedicated to Ceri and Gaabi and the crew at AmeriCymru – a pro-active, savvy, ex-patriot, Welsh-American dynamo – the author is himself unashamedly visible in his poetry. Don’t get me wrong, and admitting that all art is in part vanity, this is not a look-at–me-I’m-cool kind of collection, I stopped reading those ages ago. The attraction is in the personal honesty and the ever-unexpected stimulus for the verse –the scenario. (Am I allowed to use that word verse in ‘14? There’s rhythm, tempo, agreement of sounds ac ati … yes I think I can.)

Take the opening poem Juggling. A daughter is juggling fruit in a kitchen that sets off a series of quasi-real almost mythical remembrances that circle back, just like the juggling hands and juggled objects themselves, to a maybe never-to-be-realized desire to start juggling or gardening or stonemasonry, and the universal wish to go back, relive selective memories. Is that what the author intended? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter anyway. The first glory of poetry is that whatever truth you get from the poem is yours to keep. Perhaps this is only a personal truth, bringing me to the second glory, which is that the poet may not know what the poem means, having been merely the creator, and anyway, once you show it to others, you are inviting them to imagine, spin a web, take a trip and perhaps even let you know what your poem is really about.

Some selected imaginings:

Moving -- the infrequent freedom of chairs.

A warm and sandy love -- Mediterranean cinematographic myth-real.

Currents -- the dark and painfully real-real.

By now you may have noticed, as I skip through the selection, the range of subject/scenario is broad.

Size matters -- the dimensions of Wales

Secret life of a postman -- the true identity of the work/man.

In a pocket, among those travellers

within me, I found a scrunched up

piece of paper …

Is this what this book is about? At least a major theme? I suspect so.

Pathways -- irrevocable directions.

Odysseus complains about the publicity -- Homeric paparazzi. The collection takes an unusual tack.

Airtime -- lavatory for thinkers.

The black rabbit -- reality creating the metaphor.

Chapter 2 ( Simeon Ellerton, Between a Rock and a Hard Place ) takes us to a fresh and wondrous sequence of did-you-know type of extraordinary, short, factual, prose paragraphs, followed by an entertaining and often humorous poetic gloss; the whole held together with a rare glue.

With Chapter 3, we are back in the individual thought/poem world with Time sadly presenting the oldest and most constant of poetic themes; The look -- voyeuristic envy-lust; Beowulf -- 21 ^st century mythology; Sacrament (1&2) translations from the Welsh … I think you’re beginning to get the picture: The collection is as intricate as the man who wrote and assembled the word pieces; they are one and the same; a cawl, a lobscouse with accidental ingredients carefully selected and combined from myth, history, dream, hallucination, experience, bias, heritage; many accessible, some edgy, puzzling, some transparent, inevitably metaphoric, ancient and modern and overall, damn well entertaining. I’m left with two thoughts, having finished the collection: Significance often builds nests in exotic trees and, just as the poet can’t hide behind the poem, neither can the reader.

P.S. 4, Requiem, In Memory of my Mother, the last poem sequence, from a purely personal point of view, is the very best of the bunch. You can accompany Mr. Jones as he wanders down the winding lanes of loss that inevitably sets off unexpected flashbacks; sends postcards from the ether that tell us of known yet strangely unfamiliar destinations. All of us, at some time, will have walked those lanes that lead to a new you.

Enjoy Secret life of a Postman. I did .

John Good/Sioni Dda, El Mirage, AZ., Summer ’14.

BUY 'SECRET LIFE OF A POSTMAN' HERE

Tony Kendrew is an American poet of Welsh ancestry. In September 2012 he started an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David. The campus for the course is in the small town of Lampeter, site of the third oldest institute of higher education in Britain - after Oxford and Cambridge. AmeriCymru spoke to Tony about his work and future plans. Visit Tony Kendrew's website here

Feathers Scattered in the Wind draws together reflections on the people and places of Northern California and Wales. Care to introduce the collection for our readers?

Tony: I would love to. I’ve been living in Northern California since the 80's. Each time I moved it was to a more remote and beautiful place, until ten years ago I found the valley I now call home. All of the places I lived inspired what I suppose we could call nature poetry, though the poems aren’t just descriptive, because I always seem to find a human story hidden in the rivers and forests and deserts. And I don’t mean that my poems tell the story of the people living in those places, but that the places themselves give rise to reflections about what it is to be human. We have been living on earth for a very long time, and I think the landscape is intimately connected with our thoughts and feelings. To give an obvious example, the river: constant but changeable, deep or bickering, “wider than a mile,” you can’t push it, and of course “you can’t step into the same river twice.” And it isn’t just landscape either: sudden encounters with plants and wildlife bring insights of their own. Our minds have been sculpted by nature.

About half the poems in 'Feathers Scattered in the Wind' were written in California. The other half come from Wales. They were my responses to my year living and learning and rambling in West Wales, on the Coastal Path, in the ruins of Strata Florida or the beaches of Ceredigion.

I am, I suppose most interested in the communication of awe. The collection has a number of poems that try to communicate that response to beauty and the ineffable, whether it’s nature, or the effect of a painting on the viewer or a piece of music on the listener.

AmeriCymru: In September 2012 you started an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Wales. What can you tell us about this experience?

Tony: Well, it was a wonderful experience! I fell into it by a stroke of serendipity, and knew immediately that the teaching style and the faculty at Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, were going to suit me just fine. The personal attention and intimacy of this small school made me feel cared for, and the sessions with poet Menna Elfyn and dramatist Dic Edwards, and regular visits from Wales’ best writers, meant that everything I wrote went under the microscope. Just what I needed! It was a lot of work, but that‘s exactly what I was there for.

AmeriCymru: The poems on your Turning CD focus on the themes of migration and identity. What inspired this collection?

Tony: My mother was Welsh and went to China as a teacher in her late twenties. There she met and married my English father. So not only did I have to figure out where I came from, but my options were on the other side of the world!

The themes of movement and identity have concerned me all my life, and my year at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David brought them into focus like never before. So I decided to write as my MA dissertation a series of poems that reflect on the urge to migrate and explore, how that urge was expressed in my own family and life, and how it relates to a sense of place and belonging. There are twenty-two poems, and they take two directions, one towards the history of the Welsh side of my family, arranged chronologically, the other towards the nature of nationality and diaspor a in general.

A number of poems tell the stories of particular members of the Welsh side of my family, trying to capture some of the characteristics of Welshness with illustrations of the delights and tragedies of family and emigration. I also touch on the influence of my cultural and genetic heritage on my own life and work.

And though the Welsh word hiraeth does not appear in these English language poems, we could say that the collection is really an exploration of hiraeth in poetic form.

AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little about your anthology 'Seven Views of the South Fork River'?

Tony: The South Fork of the Trinity River runs past the bottom of my property and has been my muse for the last ten years. It’s designation as a wild and scenic river means it goes up when it rains and goes down when it doesn’t – something that dams and reservoirs have hidden from the experience of a large part of the population. It is an awesome sight to watch the river rise and spread out across the valley. Some years ago I decided to sing the river’s praises with a group of poems describing places along its course. This became 'Seven Views of the South Fork River', which is embedded in the printed collection 'Feathers Scattered in the Wind'. The poems talk about the river in a blatantly metaphorical way!

AmeriCymru: What's next for Tony Kendrew?

Tony: I am currently on the editorial board of The Lampeter Review, the online magazine of the University of Wales Trinity St. David's Creative Writing Centre. It’s terrific to be at the receiving end of great writing and to be in touch with the other editors on the production of the magazine. I also write a regular piece for the magazine, a sort of letter from America, that gives a personal view of the issue’s theme or a literary topic that’s caught my eye.

I hope 'Feathers Scattered in the Wind' will find a US publisher, as I think it has roots on both sides of the Atlantic and wish we didn’t have to get it shipped from the UK. And I’d like to see the poems of the CD Turning in print too. I love to hear poets reading their work, but many people prefer to snuggle down with a book of poems than hear them read out loud.

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

Tony: I’m delighted to be able to meet with other Welsh Americans via Americymru. As a writer I’ve been a bit of a hermit, so it’s heartening to see these connections being made through that difficult to define something that is our shared Welshness. And with March 1st coming up I’d like to wish everyone a very happy St. David’s Day. Cymru am Byth.

POEMS FROM 'TURNING'

Bruce Laders fourth collection of poetry, Embrace, is about the need for love and intimacy. Winner of the 2010 Left Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition, he has received a writer-in-residence fellowship from The Wurlitzer Foundation and an honorarium from the College of Creative Studies at UC-Santa Barbara. A New York City teacher for many years, he is the founding director of Bridges Tutoring, an organization based in Raleigh, North Carolina, educating multicultural students. AmeriCymru spoke to Bruce about his work and about the poets craft.

AmeriCymru: Hi Bruce, and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. You won the Left Coast Eisteddfod poetry competition last year with your poem 'Iberia' . Care to tell us what inspired it?

Bruce: The night I wrote Iberia, the famous gypsy flamenco dancer, Carmen Amaya, and I danced a passionate duet at Los Gallos in Sevilla. The image in the fifth stanza of the poem, gypsy fires dance duende from earth/ like poppies of blood/ flaming Andalusian mountains refers to our unforgettable performance. Actually, Ceri, what really inspired the poem might not sound as exciting.

I was traveling alone in Spain in 1977 with a Berlitz handbook and a semester of high school Spanish. Being a fan of flamenco singing and dancing, I attended a flamenco performance in Sevilla. I wrote the poem in Mallorca, then flew to England for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, and visited Laugharne where Dylan wrote most of his poems. The friendly people I met in Wales are also in my memory.

The words and images flowed together in a single draft. It was an attempt to evoke the duende spirit of Spains culture. The sprung organic energy of poets like Dylan Thomas and G.M. Hopkins (who considered himself half Welsh) had already influenced me, as had the surreal poetry of Lorca. A Spanish friend in Brooklyn helped me translate the poem when I came back home, but I havent tried to get it published in Spanish. Poems often live with me many years before theyre ready to send out. I wasnt satisfied with the last four lines and revised them in 2003 with the allusion to Don Quixote, then the poem was published by Talking River at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho. After reading the Eisteddfod Competition poems on the AmeriCymru site, I thought it might be a good one to enter and was honored that Peter Thabit Jones chose it. Iberia is included in one of my full-length books thats almost finished.

AmeriCymru: Your most recent collection, 'Embrace' marks something of a departure from earlier anthologies like 'Landscapes of Longing' . What prompted you to focus on personal relationships and the universal human need for love in this collection?

Bruce: Id been publishing poems about love and eroticism in magazines for many years. The decision to include all love poems in one book took place after having many relationship experiences and being in a second marriage. Like many of us, Im still trying to understand relationships and how to make marriage succeed. Just imagine all the trouble and time it would save if everyone owned talking social robots downloaded with different personalities. We could finally get rid of the problems involved in maintaining relationships. The Vicissitudes of Romance section of Landscapes of Longing, has poems focused on intimate relationships, and Discovering Mortality, my first full-length collection also includes poems about love.

The motive to write positively about love and sex went into Embrace. Its about various conflicting and amusing moments between lovers. My wife, Renata, who is Polish, likes to believe that every poem in the book is about her, and thats fine with me since she inspired the book and I want the marriage to survive. There are so many kinds of love that perhaps the need for it is what makes it universal. I dont believe romantic love, as we know it in the western world, is universal, though the need for a kind of intimate loving connection with another is probably what makes us human and prevents total destruction. Contemporary poetryin the US anywayis losing the intimate author-reader connection. A thin line separates the personal from the sentimental, and experienced poets try to stay away from the greeting-card zone. That could be one reason there arent more poets writing about love affairs. It also requires a lot of strength to explore difficult conflicted feelings.

AmeriCymru: Your poem "How to Bring a Marriage Good Luck" contains a number of 'tips' to help maintain a healthy relationship. Care to tell us a little more about it? I particularly enjoyed the sparseness and finality of number 5:- "Cancel seven business engagements."

Bruce: Ceri, Im glad you like the fifth step. My brother asked me to read this poem at his wedding in Eugene two year ago and its one of my favorites. I want readers to imagine browsing through a bookstore, opening an old book of mysterious encoded spells and turning to a page on how to bring good luck into a relationship. The book of charms has been used so much that part of the last step is missing (maybe stolen) as indicated in the poem.

The poem is about the magic that can happen when we make time for ourselves and the loved ones in our lives. It takes time and effort to crack the secret encryptions of our relationships. Perhaps love relationships have become too much like business engagements. Step five seems to work almost as effectively as number six, the sensuous/erotic step, which has been proven effective through many years of personal experience. Five works better in theory than practice since a lot of us would settle for canceling even one business engagement if we could. The entire poem is intended to be a humorous satire on our struggles to balance our hectic lives and make relationships work. I have to voice a disclaimer that any of the tips in the poem help to maintain a healthy relationship, though sharing humor about loves craziness can bring temporary relief.

AmeriCymru: How should we approach our reading of poetry in the 21st century? Should it be a comfortable/entertaining or an unnerving and unsettling experience?

Bruce: Perhaps when we read poetry, we should ask ourselves if the poems have a magical effect on us, if something in a poem invites us to read it again, if the subject and the way its written influence the way we think about, feel about, or perceive the world. The question is related to others like what is beauty in poetry, what kinds of challenges should poetry be offering, and how much risk should poets take with their work? That is to say, a lot of uncomfortable poetry challenges us because it deals with unpleasant subject matter, and at the same time its impact brings to awareness a sense of beauty within us. Since the question is perennial in literary history and argued among poets and critics, its hard to answer it adequately.

What can be inferred from this question is the issue of whether should poets focus on unpleasant subjects like suffering, evil, death, economic inequalities, and politics, or write comfortable feel-good poems, leaving to politicians and journalists the ugly, messy stuff about war and other horrendous problems that threaten our planet. I believe that poets need to address the important issues of their times. The challenges will be to interpret scientific breakthroughs in the fields of physics, biology, environmental studies, and technology. Recent discoveries are already changing the way we think about the origin of the universe and the meaning of life. The changes themselves are unsettling and poets need to address the problems.

I like to read challenging social and political poems that explore difficult age-old themes like the meanings of freedom, justice, and love in new ways that seem magical. My emotional and intellectual responses to themes like these are similar to listening to certain kinds of music like jazz and European classical, but I cant speak for the ways that other readers approach poetry since, like music, what we look for, and find in poetry, differs depending on our life experiences and knowledge of the arts. Much of what I liked to read when I was a newcomer to poetry isnt the kind of poetry I enjoy after four decades of reading and publishing, though I return to the classics and continue to get ideas from them. The second section of Landscapes of Longing is my interpretation of the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus from the viewpoints of 12 different speakers. I wrote them to get at certain truths about human nature that might be disturbing.

Poets provide lenses of experience for reflecting on the world. Poetry written from the perspectives of established religious beliefs will always be around and readers may find comfort in them. However, the dichotomy of comfortable versus disturbing is paradoxical in that poets with the ability to write about difficult emotional material can open a window of empathy for readers and provide them with opportunities to find comfort. Poetry concerned with the unpleasant real world we live in can be entertaining, comforting, and even spiritual to the extent that readers can connect with a poets emotions and share the knowledge, experiences, and wisdom in the poems. Poetry will continue to help us become better human beings and lead more fulfilling lives.

The experience of reading and listening to poetry is already being revolutionized. In the next two or three decades, poets will be projecting virtual sensory images as holographic text messages from computers, cameras, and phones. Poets and audiences will be able to participate in slams, open mics, and workshops in our living rooms, classrooms, and on our porches. Poetry books and magazines will be sold at supermarket check outs, as well as bookstores, for those of us who want hard copies in our hands. The proliferation of online magazines and social networking tools is only the beginning of how poetry will be popularized and marketed as entertainment. Many poetry publishers and poets will be marketed like other entertainment enterprises. Its a good idea for poets and readers to invest more in each other. We havent done that enough in the past.

AmeriCymru: Is the ability to write poetry a gift or is it the end result of decades of hard work?

Bruce: Another complex question. The ability to write lyrical verse is probably a gift related to the ability to create music. Most of what we consider to be traditional lyric poetrystanzas with end-rhyme schemes set to classical metric forms that dominated poetry for so many centurieshave become less popular in contemporary poetry. The fact that a poem is rhymed and has classical Greek meter doesnt necessarily make the poetry lyrical, in my opinion, only formal.

Rhythm is an open-ended resource for creativity. Modern and contemporary free verse that sings from an organic place in the poets distinctively voiced instrument is far more interesting, to me, than formal poetry and comes from decades of desire and hard work, though good formal and free verse both require lifetimes of commitment to craft. Commitment is about making poetry the top priority, and the willingness to sacrifice income and material comforts. A sense of being true to ones poetic gift, a striving to get it (the gift) right, may be a poets ultimate responsibility.

I began as a lyric poet and all the poems in my first chapbook, Buoy on the Water, are free verse songs. Then I decided to blend natural cadences with narrative poetry so that I could more effectively relate what I know to readers. I like to let the content and rhythm of each poem determine its eventual form. The turn, or shift, in rhythmic direction that occurs in sonnets is natural for me and I have experimented with the possibilities of sonnet form. The ability to work with metaphorical ideas to convey feelings, especially extended metaphor, may also be inborn, and can certainly be developed.

AmeriCymru: How difficult is it for modern poets to find an audience? Is the internet an aid or a hindrance?

Bruce: Since the advent of the Internet and social networking, poets are finding the audiences they want a lot easier, and its a lot easier for audiences to find the poets they like. Poetry is becoming more of a viable product to larger audiences. Millions of viewers visit certain poetry magazine sites every issue, but I dont think they carefully read more than a few of the poems on each site. I can read steadily at the computer for 20-30 minutes before my eyes get weary, but I can read a book or magazine in my hands for hours. The increased number of open mics, workshops, and literary organizations also makes it easier for poets to find their audience. The real difficulty is how to maintain the audience after finding it, since there are so many interesting poets in the marketplace and most of the audience is comprised of poets. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of audiences read poetry who arent also writers. This is a problem that publishers and small press, non-commercial writers continue to face.

Poets with Internet know-how and the time to social network are having good results. The Internet has been helping my work get published. Whether the Internet will influence the quality of poetry to achieve a higher or lower level over several decades is debatable; everyone has an opinion and its still too soon to conclude one way or the other. One of the dangers is that poetsbeginners in particularmay believe that networking is a shortcut to learning the craft of writing and use it mainly to become popular. By focusing mainly on their audience, and not taking the time to read poets of proven excellence, many are neglecting better-quality poets who have spent lifetimes developing their craft.

AmeriCymru: What advice would you offer to anyone considering poetry as a vocation?

Bruce: Go for your dreamwhether the dream is organizing poetry events in your community, writing poems to change the world, or winning prestigious award competitions. Reflect on why you write and the deeper meanings of your poems. Remember to write about the things and people you love; even experienced poets often forget this. Locate your inner comfort zone and take risks, research new subject matter of interest to you and try to write about ideas in ways you didnt think you could, challenge yourself to write about a subject that is emotionally difficulteven if that poem doesnt work, another one in the future could surprise you. If nothing in a new poem is surprising you, it probably wont grab other readers. Write several versions of the poem, experiment with various rhythms, let the content determine the rhythm and free verse shapes of lines and stanzas, and use traditional forms to see what works better for you. Stretch outside your zone and keep learning. Ask for feedback about your writing from various poets whose writing you admire and from editors of magazines you value for the work they publish.

My practical advice is to spend a lot of time writing. Learn the poetry press market and network as soon as you can, but not at the expense of sacrificing needed writing time. If youre spending more time networking and promoting than writing poems, schedule more writing time. Use search engines like Duotropes Digest to find publishers looking for your kind of work. Also develop the craft of prose, if you can, to complement poetry and help build a career. Join writers groups and societies, writing meetup groups, book clubs, mens and womens centers, attend poetry readings and workshops, and get into college writing programs. Develop a routine of writing and/or submitting every day. Dont worry if your work doesnt get published the first five or more years you submit; unsigned rejection slips and email responses with no comments are disappointing, but they dont mean anything about the quality of your writing. Search for other magazines and book publishers and believe in your talent. Support other poets and they will eventually support you if you stay committed.

Read a variety of international poets living and dead. If you dont enjoy the process of reading and writing poetry, read other genres. Maybe fiction or nonfiction is better suited to your talent. Poets need a lot of time to write, independent publishers expect them to spend a lot of time to promote their books, and the books bring little if any profit to the poets. A very small percentage of poets are fortunate enough to find commercial publishers. Anyone who believes they can earn a significant income from publishing only poetry should choose another occupation. Some money from poetry can be made from teaching workshops and courses, but the work is harder, travel expenses are involved, and the hours are much longer than in other vocations.

My rewards from poetry have come from the dream of being a poet who writes inventive poems that others understand and enjoy. I also get a sense of fulfillment from being friends with other poets in writers groups, and reading my work in print alongside poets whose work I admire. There have been exciting surprisesthe $150 and publication in The Seventh Quarry that came with winning the Eisteddfod Competition were unexpected bonuses. There are poetry contests that offer thousands to the winner. However, the chance of winning any contest is like a lottery. In other words, Im not going to leave my job as director of Bridges Tutoring. Besides, I enjoy helping students develop writing and reading skills and they have inspired many of my poems.

AmeriCymru: Where can people read/purchase your work online?

Bruce: My thanks to anyone who reads this interview. People can find excerpts of my books and purchase them from my author site at www.brucelader.com . The books are also available from the publishers, but you save shipping and handling costs by emailing me directly at bridgesbl@aol.com. Plus, you will receive a FREE jewelry gift of your choice: one pair of beaded earrings or one FREE beaded bookmark for any copy of Embrace, Landscapes of Longing, or Discovering Mortality that you order. My wife, Renata, is Polish and an award-winning artist who crafts gorgeous gifts. She made the complimentary jewelry to help launch the books.

There are YouTube videos of my readings and interviews, and magazines like Poetry, New York Quarterly, Harpur Palate, CircleShow, Centrifugal Eye, Earthshine, and Contemporary Verse 2 have archived my work online.

Here are links to my readings and interviews:

Red Room

The Artist's Craft Interview & Reading (Channel 10, Raleigh) January 2010

Full of Crow Radio Podcast Interview & Reading, August 29, 2010

AmeriCymru: What's next for Bruce Lader?

Bruce: Diolch/Thank you, Ceri, for this chance to introduce myself to AmeriCymru members and visitors.

Radio interviews and public readings in NC to promote Embrace and Landscapes of Longing will continue. A chapbook of my antiwar poems is due to be published soon. The title is Voyage of the Virtual Citizen and the publisher is Lummox Press. The book is about a Special Forces soldier and his experiences from enlistment through his adjustment to civilian life and coping with PTSS (which reminds me that Ive been reading Alun Lewiss Collected Poems, thanks to my friend Mary Perkins-Gray, an excellent Welsh poet). Toward the end of 2011, erven Barva Press will publish Fugitive Hope, a full-length book of poems about ways that hope is lost and regained.

Im always busy working on new poems and publishing in magazines and anthologies. I have been working on three chapbooks and a new full-length manuscript and querying to find interested publishers. Anyone is welcome to email me and talk about life, poetry, and the interview. I have edited poetry manuscripts for authors to submit to book publishers and magazines, and have edited papers to help students meet course and degree requirements. We could also talk about those possibilities if you like.

Pob hwyl/All the best to your organization.

Interview by Ceri Shaw Email

CYMRAEG |  ENGLISH

In this interview John Good speaks to Menna Elfyn, an award-winning poet and playwright who writes with passion of the Welsh language and identity. She is the best known and most translated of all modern Welsh-language poets. Author of over twenty books of poetry including Aderyn Bach Mewn Llaw (1990), winner of a Welsh Arts Council Prize; the bilingual Eucalyptus: Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994 from Gomer and her previous collection, Cell Angel (1996) from Bloodaxe, children’s novels and educational books, numerous stage, radio and television plays, she has also written libretti for US and UK composers.

...

John: Fel person sy wedi dysgu''R Gymraeg yn America ar ôl gadael Cymru yn y saithdegau, mae diddordeb mawr ‘da fi mewn profiadau pobl Cymraeg eu hiaith Tramor. Fel awdures, a ydych chi byth wedi’ch synnu gan y brwdfrydedd a chroeso a gafodd eich gwaith ar draws Clawdd Offa oddi wrth bobl Ddi-Gymraeg?

Menna: Wel ydw mewn gwirionedd. Wnes i erioed freuddwydio y byddai fy ngwaith yn croesi dros Glawdd Offa na chyrraedd America, Tsieina, Sbaen, Norwy-- a gwledydd eraill ond mae''n deimlad hyfryd am fod hynny''n golygu bod cynulleidfaoedd yn dod i wybod fy mod yn sgwennu yn y Gymraeg yn gyntaf ond mae fy ngwelediad wrth gwrs yn ehangach na hynny. Rwy''n gweld y byd trwy ''r Gymraeg a does dim testun na ellid ysgrifennu amdano yn yr iaith honno. Dyna i chi Harlem yn y Nos, cerdd a luniais pan oeddwn yn ysgrifennu libreto ar gyfer Cerddorfa Ffilharmonic Efrog Newydd ac yn gorfod byw yno am wythnosau ar y tro , dros gyfnod o flwyddyn a hanner ac yn gorfod mynd i gwrdd a''r cyfansoddwr a oedd yn byw yn Washington Heights... a dychwelyd wedyn trwy Harlem.

Un enghraifft efallai ond rwy''n dal i ddweud wrth bawb pan af ar Wyliau Llenyddol -- mod i''n ysgrifennu ar gyfer y byd i gyd felly dyw e ddim yn syndod mewn gwirionedd.. Ers Tachwedd 2013, rwy wedi darllen yn Tsieina, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Seattle, St Andrews yr Alban a''r wythnos nesa'' yn Grasmere, cartre Wordsworth , yna yng Nghernyw ddiwedd Mai. Felly rwy wastad ar grwydr a wastad yn dechrau darlleniadau gan ddarllen yn Gymraeg ac yna''n darllen rhannau rhwng cerddi, fel bod y Gymraeg yn toddi''n naturiol i''r cyfieithiadau Saesneg. Fy ngherdd gynta'' bob tro yw '' Cusan Hances'' ar ol i RSThomas ( a wnaeth gyfieithu dwy o''m cerddi gyda llaw) ddweud bod cerdd mewn cyfieithiad fel cusanu trwy hances! Gwell hynny na pheidio a chusanu o gwbl!

John: Darllenais eich llyfr dwyieithog MURMUR yn ddiweddar. Fyddech chi amlinellu ac egluro inni eich dull o drin cyfieithu gan awduron eraill a chi’ch hunan?

Menna: O''r cychwyn, pan oedd galw i mi ddarllen mewn mannau fel Sbaen a ''r Iwerddon roeddwn wedi pwyso ar gyfeillion o feirdd-- Nigel Jenkins, Gillian Clarke a''r un sydd yn ffrind gorau i mi Elin ap Hywel, ac eraill er mwyn cael y cyfieithiadau gorau posib. Roedd yn rhaid i mi wneud ambell un fy hun ond roedd Tony Conran yn dweud '' you are not worthy of the poet!'' achos roedd e''n credu fy mod yn mynd ar goll wrth drosi a ddim yn ffyddlon i''r gerdd . Ond pam ddylwn i? A dyna''r drwg wrth gwrs o wneud y cyfieithiad eich hun sef eich bod yn mynd i rywle arall yn lle glynu at y gwaith mewn llaw. Dyna pam mae cyfieithu yn gelfyddyd o''i wneud yn iawn. Un gorchymyn oedd gen i -- i''r cyfieithwyr - gwnewch y gerdd yn well -- trowch hi''n gerdd annibynnol ond gydag ambell gysgod o''r Gymraeg. Rhaid iddi fyw heb ei chwaer fel petai.

Mae cyfieithu i ieithoedd eraill yn fwy o broblem wrth gwrs ac mae''n cymryd amser. Mae cyfrol mewn Hindi ar waith, cyfrol Arabeg, cyfrol Gatalaneg, i enwi dim ond rhai. Lwc pur yw cael rhywun fel yn achos yr Arabeg i ddod atoch ar ddiwedd darlleniad a dweud ei bod yn mynnu fy nghael yn ei mamiaith hi sef Arabeg. Fel yna mae''r gwaith yn hedfan mae''n debyg. Bydd ambell wall wrth gwrs mewn ambell lyfr er enghraifft fel wnaeth cyfieithydd o Tsieieg gyfieithu '' Drws yn Epynt'' yn y llyfr o''m gwaith yn yr iaith honno yn '' Drws yn yr Aifft -- Door in Egypt! Wrth gwrs doedden nhw''n gwybod dim am Epynt yng Nghymru ac am y bobl yn cael ei hel o''r darn hwnnw o Bowys er mwyn i''r milwyr ymarfer yno.

Ond, erbyn meddwl roedd ysbryd newydd rhyfedd i''r gerdd ar ei newydd wedd ac roedd yn gweithio gyda phob dim sy''n digwydd yn y wlad drist honno y dyddiau yma. Yn Murmur mae dau o''m cyfieithwyr yn rhai newydd-- Damian Walford Davies ac rwy''n ceisio annog Paul Henry i wneud mwy gan ei fod yn fardd mor wych ac yn siarad Cymraeg. Fe gollais fy nghyfieithydd cyntaf eleni, gan y bu Nigel Jenkins farw a fe a fi oedd yn cyfieithu ein gilydd ar y dechrau nol yn yr wythdegau. Colled bersonol i mi a cholled fwy i''w deulu a Chymru. Ond dyma fi wedi crwydro oddi ar y cwestiwn. Nigel ddarllenodd y cerddi mewn cyfieithiad yn un o''m lansiadau yn Abertawe gan ei fod yn ffrind mor agos ac annwyl i mi .

John: Unwaith, mae athro Cymraeg wedi fy ngofyn i a allwn i siarad Cymraeg. “Dim ond Cymraeg ‘Cwmafan’ oedd f’ateb. Yn syth ymlaen , mae fe wedi dweud rhywbeth fel “Hynny yw Cymraeg!” Beth ydy’ch meddyliau chi ar y pwysigrwydd o dafodieithoedd a sut all pobl gyffredin, lenyddol a chymdeithasau fel AmeriCymru camu i’r adwy’u hachub nhw?

Menna: Rwy''n dotio ar dafodieithoedd ac yn casglu pob dim a medraf er mwyn eu defnyddio rywbryd mewn cerddi. Mae''r bardd yn wiwer wedi''r cyfan a''i chnau yw geiriau. Ie, dylid ar bob cyfri eu casglu, eu harfer, eu cadw a llunio geiriau newydd sbon. Er enghraifft mae''r gair '' selfie'' wedi ei droi erbyn hyn yn hunlun sy;n reit dwt dwi''n meddwl.

John: Bob hyn a hyn ac weithiau yn aml, ceir yr ysbryd neu gysgod o Gynghanedd yn eich gwaith chi. Ydy harmoni a gwrthbwynt y geiriau yn gymar cyfartal i ystyr yn y cyfansoddiad?

Menna: Pan oeddwn i''n ysgrifennu yn chwedegau, doedd gen i ddim amser i ddysgu''r rheolau a cheisio ffrwyno fy ngwaith -- roedd gen i bethau own i am eu dweud heb hualau ''r gynghanedd. A hynny er bod fy nhad yn cynganeddu ond roedd mynd ato a dangos ambell linell o gynghanedd ac yntau''n dweud bod yna gam acennu yn ddigon i mi roi''r gorau iddi. Ond mae''r gynghanedd fel un haen yn hyfryd -- ac er fy mod erbyn hyn yn medru cynganeddu a gwneud ambell englyn neu gywydd digon teidi, dwi ddim yn meddwl ei fod yn fy nghyfffroi yn gymaint a cherddi rhydd.

Dwedodd Robert Hass.. I love the line, following the line - I''ve never written a sonnet in my life''. Wel dwi wedi ysgrifennu mewn ffurf pan yw''n gweithio''n ddiymdrech ond rwy''n dwlu ar farddoniaeth Americanaidd - mae dull y beirdd mor eang , mor ddihualau a dyna dwi''n treio ei wneud yn fy ngwaith innau. Rhaid cael yr angerdd cychwynnol a bwrw iddi wedyn ac os daw llinell o gynghanedd i''r golwg neu dan yr wyneb, wel gorau oll, ond nid cychwyn yn y fan honno dwi''n ei wneud. Rwy''n ei weld fel nofio mewn pwll nofio -- i fyny ac i lawr, cadw o fewn eich ffiniau gyda''r nofwyr eraill tra bod y wers rydd yn gadael i mi nofio yn y mor, heb wybod ei ddyfnder , ac heb wybod ei berygl ac yn gallu mynd o un man i''r llall heb i neb fy rhwystro -- heblaw fi fy hunan wrth gwrs.

Menna Elfyn yn darllen '' Handkerchief Kiss '' / '' Cusan Hances '' a cherddi eraill YouTube

John: Ydych chi’n hoff o ddedleins? Fe ddywed rhai’u bod nhw yn symbylu ‘r dychymyg; eraill sy’n dweud y gwrthwyneb. Hefyd, beth ydy’ch meddyliau chi am gomisiynau?

Menna: Wel rwy''n byw ar gomisiynau erbyn hyn boed yn ddramau radio neu''n gerddi neu''n ddrama lwyfan. Ond gan fy mod yn ysgrifennu bod dydd mae''r bardd wastad a''i lygaid yn agored am y gerdd nesa'' . A''r annisgwyl sydd wastad wedi fy nghyffroi.

Fe ofynnwyd i mi lunio dwy linell am Catrin Glyndwr i gerflun a godwyd iddi yn Llundain ac mi luniais--

Godre twr adre nid aeth
[At the tower end –far away from home
Aria ei rhyw yw hiraeth
[Longing is a woman’s song]

Dyna un fan lle mae''r gynghanedd yn help i greu rhywbeth byr , twt. teimladwy gobeithio. Ond ar ol ei llunio roedd Catrin Glyndwr yn fy meddwl a bob hyn a hyn roeddwn yn meddwl am ei sefyllfa yno gyda''i phlant yn Nhwr Llundain ac yn tristau wrth feddwl am hynny. Ac er i''r cerddi gymryd deg mlynedd mewn gwirionedd - dyna oedd y cerddi rown i am eu gosod yn gynta'' yn Murmur. Mae''r gyfrol yn llawn Murmuron wrth gwrs ond mae''r cerddi hyn yn mynegi rhywbeth dwfn am fod mewn gwlad estron ar glo, heb eich mamiaith.

John: Mae Cymru a’r Cymry yn rhan annatod o’ch gwaith llenyddol chi. Ydy hi’n wahanol ysgrifennu oddi cartref? Oes hoff le gweithio ‘da chi?

Menna: Pan dwi adre ,dyna pryd y caf gyfle i feddwl, i ystyried popeth. Pan mae rhywun ar daith mae yna gymaint o bethau i''w gweld, ac i fod yn ofidus fel checo bagiau, cloi drysau stafelloedd yn y gwesty ac ati. Ond dyna pryd rwy''n rhydd sef gartre a hefyd lle mae''r Gymraeg i''w chlywed ar y stryd. Mae Llandysul yn dal yn un o''r pentrefi mwyaf Cymraeg yng Nghymru a chaf foddhad o fynd i bob siop a medru siarad Cymraeg. Ond rwy''n anniddig hefyd yn aml gyda'' mi fy hun a''m cyd- Gymru.

Gwnes ymgyrch bersonol yn ddiweddar o ddweud diolch nid unwaith wrth adael siopau mewn ardaloedd Cymraeg a mannau lle doedd y person ddim yn siarad Cymraeg gan ddweud diolch rhyw deirgwaith -- yn y gobaith y byddent efallai yn troi i''w ddweud yn Gymraeg. Amlach na pheidio dim ond ''thank you'' a gawn sy''n reit warthus wrth feddwl faint o weithiau y mae''n rhaid gen i -- iddyn nhw glywed y gair. A dyna''r gair cyntaf a ddysgaf o fynd i wlad dramor. Os na allwn fynd ymhellach na '' diolch'' yna... wel, mae''n well peidio a dechrau''r sgwrs honno!

John: Ers tro byd, mae beirdd Cymreig wedi bod crefftwr di-ofn, hyd yn oed gyda’r ddyletswydd o siarad am gamwedd. Rhowch inni eich barn ar wleidyddiaeth mewn celfyddyd, os gwelwch chi’n dda?

Menna: Rwy''n gweld y ddeubeth weithiau yn dod at ei gilydd. Fe wnaeth Nigel Jenkins a finnau ddechrau ymgyrch gwrth -apartheid yn yr wythdegau i beidio a gadael i''n gwaith gael ei ddangos gydag arddangosfa o Dde Affrica. Mae sefyll dros annhegwch wastad wedi bod yn rhan o waith bob dydd beirdd OND pan rydych yn ysgrifennu, mae''r gwaith yn galw amdanoch i fod yn ffyddlon i''r grefft a bydd pob mathau o deimladau, rhagfarnau, yn dod i''r wyneb. Felly, dwi ddim bellach yn ysgrifennu gwaith didactig na gwaith ffeminyddol gwleidyddol ei naws. Efallai bod hynny yn siom i rai oedd yn fy ngweld fel lladmerydd i achosion arbennig.

Ar ol dweud hyn i gyd, rwy''n gyffrous bod PEN Cymru ar fin ei lansio gan i mi ddechrau ymchwilio i''r posibiliad rhyw ddegawd yn ol ond roedd y teithiau yn ei wneud yn amhosib i mi ymrwymo i''w sefydlu. Rwy mor falch y bydd yn realiti cyn bo hir. Rhaid bod yn wleidyddol fel dinesydd wrth gwrs ac rwy''n cefnogi llawer o achosion gwleidyddol- rhy niferus i''w nodi yma.

John: Unrhyw beth diddorol ar y gweill? Unrhyw ddymuniad heb ei gwireddu?

Menna: Mae cyfrol am '' Gwsg'' i''w gyflwyno erbyn diwedd y flwyddyn i Wasg Gomer ar gyfer ei gyhoeddi yn 2015. Bu ar waith ac ar stop oherwydd gweithiau eraill. Bydd cynhyrchiad theatr hefyd gyda Theatr Clwyd a hefyd mae '' Gair ar Gnawd'' sef oratorio a luniodd Pwyll ap Sion a finne yn mynd ar daith yn 2015 gyda Chwmni Opera Cenedlaethol Cymru ( cafwyd dau berfformiad yn 2013) ac rydym wedi ychwanegu ato cyn iddo fynd ar daith eto. Rwy am gyfieithu mwy o farddoniaeth Gymraeg i''r Saesneg fel yn Murmur - sydd a 3 cerdd o waith Waldo yno.

John: Oes unrhyw negeseuon terfynol ‘da ti am yr aelodau a darllenwyr AmeriCymru?

Menna: Rwy wrth fy modd gyda''r wefan hon ac yn llawenhau ei bod hi mor fywiog -- dylem ar bob cyfri ei hanwesu a diolch i Ceri Shaw amdani. Ers i mi ymweld gynta'' a''r Unol Daleithiau yn 1997 rwy wedi dychwelyd i ddarllen neu ymweld -- bob blwyddyn bron iawn. Rwy wrth fy modd yno felly os ydych am fy ngwahodd i roi darlleniad i chi -- byddwn wrth fy modd yn dod atoch. Hwyl am y tro a diolch am y cyfle i gael cyfweliad ar AmeriCymru.

Interview by John Good

CYMRAEG | ENGLISH

In this interview John Good speaks to Menna Elfyn, an award-winning poet and playwright who writes with passion of the Welsh language and identity. She is the best known and most translated of all modern Welsh-language poets. Author of over twenty books of poetry including Aderyn Bach Mewn Llaw (1990), winner of a Welsh Arts Council Prize; the bilingual Eucalyptus: Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994 from Gomer and her previous collection, Cell Angel (1996) from Bloodaxe, children’s novels and educational books, numerous stage, radio and television plays, she has also written libretti for US and UK composers.

John:  As a person who has learnt Welsh in America after leaving Wales in the 70’s, I have a great interest in the experiences of Welsh speaking people abroad. As an authoress, are you ever surprised by the enthusiasm and welcome your work has received across Offa’s dyke from people who don’t speak the language?

Menna:   Well in truth I am. I never dreamt that my work would cross Offa’s Dyke then reach America, China, Spain, Norway and other countries but it is a lovely feeling because it means that audiences get to know that I primarily write in Welsh but my perspective is wider than that. I see the world through the Welsh language and there isn’t a subject that cannot be written about in that language. There you go, Harlem yn y Nos (Harlem at Night), a poem that I fashioned when I was writing a libretto for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and I had to live there for weeks at a time, over a period of a year and a half, having to meet with the composer who lived in Washington Heights … and return afterwards through Harlem.

One example perhaps, but I continue to say to everyone when I go on Literary Excursions that I write for the whole world and, truthfully, it isn’t a surprise. Since November 2013, I have read in China, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Seattle, St. Andrews Scotland, and next week Grasmere, Wordsworth’s home, then in Cornwall at the beginning of May. So I’m always roaming and always start readings reading in Welsh and then read [English?] passages between poems, because the Welsh mixes naturally with the English translations. My first poem is always ‘Cusan Hances’ (Handkerchief Kiss) after RS Thomas (he translated two of my poems by the way), saying that poetry in translation is like a kiss through a hanky! Better that than no kiss at all!

John: I read your bi-lingual book MURMUR recently. Would you outline and explain your approach to translation by other writers and by you yourself?

Menna: From the outset, when I was asked to read in places like Spain and Ireland I relied on poet friends -- Nigel Jenkins, Gillian Clarke and my best friend Elin ap Hywel and others for the best translations possible. I had to do some myself but Tony Conran said '' you are not worthy of the poet!'' because he believes I’d get lost while translating and not be faithful to the poems. But why should I? And that’s what’s bad about translating yourself, that you would end up somewhere else other than keeping to the work in hand. That’s why translation is an art that needs to be done carefully. I had one dictate for the translators – make the poem better – turn it into a self-contained poem, but with the ghost of the Welsh language. It has to live as if independent of its sister.

Translations to other languages are more problematic of course and it takes time. There are volumes available in Hindi, Arabic and Catalan, to name but a few. In the case of the Arabic volume, it was pure luck to find someone, after a reading, saying they would like to have my work in their mother tongue i.e. Arabic. As in this case, poetry can fly presumably. There will be some bad ones of course in some books, for example, the Chinese translator translated ‘Drws yn Epynt ‘[Door in Epynt] in a book of my work in that language as ‘Drws yn Aifft’ --Door in Egypt! Of course they didn’t know anything about Epynt in Wales and the people being driven from that part of Powys for the army to train there.

But, on reflection, there was a surprising new spirit to the poem with its new mien and it worked with everything that was happening in that sad country at that time. In Murmur, two of the translators were new – Damian Walford Davies and I’m trying to urge Paul Henry to do more, for he is such a brilliant poet and speaks Welsh. I lost my first translator this year when Nigel Jenkins died and he and I translated each other in the beginning back in the 80’s. It was a personal loss to me and a greater loss to his family and Wales. But there I go wondering off the question. Nigel read the poems in translation at one of my book launches in Abertawe as he was such a close and dear friend to me.

John:  Once, a Welsh teacher asked me if I could speak Welsh. “Only ‘Cwmafan’ Welsh” was my answer. Straight away he said something like “That is Welsh!” What are your thoughts on the importance of dialects and how can ordinary and literary people and societies like AmeriCymru step into the breach to save them?

Menna:   I dote on dialects and collect everything I can in order to use sometime later in poems. After all, a poet is a squirrel and words are her nuts. Yes, they should on every account be collected, their use, their safe keeping and [also] the formation of brand new words. Take the word ‘selfie’ for example, by now it has turned into self-portrait, which I think is really neat.

John: Every now and then and sometimes frequently the ghost or shadow of “Cynghanedd” [strict-meter/Bardic Welsh poetry] is found in your work. Is the harmony and counterpoint of words an equal partner to meaning in the composition?

Menna:   When I was writing in the 60’s, I didn’t have time to learn the rules and try to rein in my work – I had things to say without the fetters of cynghanedd. And then despite my father writing using Cynghanedd and trying to show me a variety of such lines, going on to tell me there were mistakes in the stresses was enough for me to give up. But cynghanedd as one stratum is lovely – and even though by now I am able to use it and make a decent enough englyn or cywydd it doesn’t excite me as much as free verse.

Robert Hass has said…’ I love the line, following the line - I''ve never written a sonnet in my life''. Well, I have written in a form when it works effortlessly but I dote on American poetry – the range of the poets is so wide, so unfettered, and that’s what I try to do in my own work. You must have the initial passion and strike at it afterwards, and if a line of cynghanedd appears or comes into view, all the better, but I don’t start from that place. I see it like swimming in a swimming pool – up and down, keeping in your lane with the other swimmers, while free verse allows me to swim in the sea, without knowledge of the depth and without knowing its danger and able to go from one place to the other without anyone limiting me –except for myself of course.

Menna Elfyn reads ''Handkerchief Kiss'' / ''Cusan Hances'' and other poems YouTube

John: Are you fond of deadlines? Some say it sparks the imagination; others the opposite. Also, what are your thoughts on commissions?

Menna:   Well, these days I live on commissions, be they radio dramas, or poems or stage plays. But having said that, poets always have their eyes open for the next poem. And the unexpected always excites me.

I was asked to write two lines about Catrin Glyndwr for a statue that was erected to her in London and I wrote –

Godre twr adre nid aeth
[At the tower end –far away from home
Aria ei rhyw yw hiraeth
[Longing is a woman’s song]

Here’s one place where cynghanedd helps create something concise, neat, a touching hope. But after it was written, Catrin Glyndwr was on my mind and every now and then I would think about her situation with her children in the Tower of London, and was saddened thinking about it. And even though in truth the poems took ten years, those were the first poems I would include in ‘Murmur’. The volume is full of Murmuron [murmurs] of course but these poems express something deep about being locked up in a foreign country without your mother tongue.

Recently I began a personal campaign of saying ‘diolch’ not only once when leaving shops in a Welsh-speaking area and places where the person didn’t  speak  Welsh, but three times in the hope perhaps they would turn to saying it in Welsh.

John: Wales and welsh people are an integral part of your literary work. Is it different writing away from home? Do you have a favorite work place?

Menna: When I am home, that’s the time when I’ll have the chance to think, to consider everything. When someone is travelling there are so many things to see, and to be careful checking bags, locking hotel doors and so on. At home, that’s when I am free and also where Welsh is heard on the street. Llandysul continues to be one of the strongest Welsh-speaking villages in Wales and I have the satisfaction of being able to speak Welsh in every shop. But I am also frequently irritable with myself and my fellow Welsh. 

Recently I began a personal campaign of saying ‘diolch’ not only once when leaving shops in a Welsh-speaking area and places where the person didn’t  speak  Welsh, but three times in the hope perhaps they would turn to saying it in Welsh. More often than not I got only ‘thank you’ which is shameful when you think about how many times they must have heard the word from me. And that’s the first word I learn going overseas. If you’re not able to go further than ‘diolch’ then …well, it’s better not to start that conversation!

John:   For a very long time, Welsh poets have been fearless craftsmen, even with the responsibility of speaking about injustice. Give us your opinion please on politics in art?

Menna:   Sometimes I see the two things come together. Nigel Jenkins and I started an anti-apartheid campaign in the 80’s not allowing our work to appear in South African shows. Standing up against unfairness always has been the every-day work of poets BUT when you write, the work calls for you to be faithful to the craft and all kinds of feelings, prejudices will rise to the surface. Therefore, I don’t write pieces with a didactic or politically feminine tone. Perhaps this is a shame to some who have seen me as an emissary of special causes.

Having said all that, I am excited that PEN Cymru is about to be launched, because I started researching the possibility some decades ago but travelling made it impossible to commit to its establishment. I’m so happy that it will be a reality before long. As a citizen, you have to be political of course and I support many political causes – too numerous to mention here.

There’s going to be a volume about ‘Cwsg’ [sleep] before the end of the year for Wasg Gomer that’ll be published in 2015.

John: Anything in progress? Any wish that needs to be realized?

Menna: There’s going to be a volume about ‘Cwsg’ [sleep] before the end of the year for Wasg Gomer that’ll be published in 2015. Because of other works it’s been stop and go. Also there’ll be a theater production with Theatr Clwyd and ‘Gair a Gnawd’, an oratorio written by Pwyll ap Sion and myself that is about to go on tour in 2015 with The Welsh National Opera Company ( it had two performances in 2013) and we’ll have  added to it before it goes on tour again. I want to translate more Welsh poetry into English as in Murmur – that has 3 poems of the work of Waldo [Williams] in it.

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

Menna: I really enjoy this site and am delighted that it is so lively – on every account, we should embrace and thank Ceri for it. Since my first visit to The United States in 1997 I have returned to read or visit very nearly every year. I am in my element there, so if you invite me to give a reading, I’d be delighted to come to you. Bye for the time being, and thanks for the chance to be interviewed on AmerCymru.

Interview by John Good

Dylan's Great Poem opens for submissions on Thursday 28 April at 9.00 am and invites anyone aged between 7 and 25 years old, living anywhere in the world, to submit up to four lines of poetry written in English or Welsh. From these, 100 lines will be chosen to create the Great Poem.

The theme for this year’s competition is ‘hands’, after the Dylan Thomas poem ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper.’

Entries need to be sent via the Developing Dylan 100 website before 12.00 noon on Thursday 5 May .

This year, we have joined forces with Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. Selected entrants to Dylan’s Great Poem, who are between 11 and 17 years of age, and living in Wales, will be invited to a poetry writing masterclass to work on entries to the Poetry Society competition.

Dylan’s Great Poem will be edited by Rufus Mufasa and clare e. potter, and will be published online and performed on #DylanDay.

For resources, see: http://www.literaturewales.org/dylans-great-poem/

To submit lines visit the Developing Dylan website .

For more information contact Literature Wales:

07846484274 / mabananajones@gmail.com

Follow online #GreatPoem #DylanDay @DyddDylanDay

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.

AmeriCymru: Hi Carole. You won the West Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition 2014 with your submission - 'Five Poems'. What can you tell us about your entry?

Carole: Hi Ceri. Yes, of course, I’ll be glad to. I’m very honored to have five of my poems selected this year by Peter Thabit Jones, and look forward to having my poems appear in a special chapbook section of  The Seventh Quarry .

When I first came across the AmeriCymru site I had been doing some genealogical research, and was excited to find a site for people of Welsh ancestry.  Once I joined, I came across the poetry competition page, and began pouring through my poems to find five that might make up a solid submission.  The first four poems are the most recent, and the last poem “Yesterday” was written when I was earning my MFA in Creative Writing.  I write in a range of styles, sometimes using common diction, and at other times, practice pressing into more dense, lyrical, or language based styles.  That said, I simply love the sound of language, and the montage effect of images in poems that sort of paint a tableau, or vignette, representing a moment, memory, place, or philosophical idea. This is a somewhat random grouping, but I chose the first poem “Talk about writing poems.” because it encourages the writing of poems, and it uses the word “eardstapa,” an Old English word meaning “wanderer,” referencing, obliquely, an ancient poem entitled “The Wanderer.” The second poem, “Made in the Shade” came about one day while walking, and thinking about some of the more disturbing things that are happening in the world.  The text is “exploded” to represent the sense of fits and starts, of fragmentation, and the way memories “play” like a recording does sometimes. The poem “Another Day” is a kind of meditation on duration, and it references a legendary person from antiquity, Cadmus, the founder of Thebes.

I like to mix obscure details like this with the commonplace. The next poem “Nothing is Perfect” is another sort of philosophical meditation, set within mundane experience.  Often when writing a poem the process itself, the sound of the language, leads me into a place where images begin to percolate, and the resulting poem is somewhat of a discovery.  This was one of those times.  Sometimes I experiment with different types of formal styles of poetry, so the next poem “Speaking of Rooms” is an example of an ekphrasis poem, meaning a poem that sets out to represent a work of visual art.  I simply love the Dutch painters' renditions of the interiors of homes and daily life from that time.  I kept one particular painting in my mind’s eye while I worked on this more formal poem, written in tetrameter, with five lines per stanza. The last poem “Yesterday” is another free verse poem, which is the way I usually write.  This one simply draws from some personal memories, working with images I have of one of my childhood homes, and the atmosphere there at the time.  

AmeriCymru: When did you first become interested in writing poetry? Where can readers go to find more of your work either online or in print?

Carole: I remember writing my first poem when I was 12 years old or so.  From then on I would occasionally write poems, or song lyrics, but did not become serious about this sort of writing until the early 1990s. I had begun keeping journals on a regular basis and realized that I have an urge to write.  I also read quite a bit, and began to realize how much I love the sounds of words, the musicality, rhythm, etc.  I decided to take a few poetry workshops, and then later having finishing a BA in Liberal Studies, went on to earn an MFA in Creative Writing with a dual concentration in poetry and fiction.

To date I’ve published a few poems with university literary journals, and a few other independent online journals.  Links to those poems, and a piece of flash fiction that has been published, can be found on my personal blog:

https://colourfieldsounding.wordpress.com/writing/

AmeriCymru: You also have an interest in art and fine art photography. Care to tell us more? Where can readers go to view your work online?

Carole: Yes, I have always had a strong interest in both art and photography for as long as I can remember.  Interestingly, I find my love of composition, along with an innate appreciation for “images” and “ideas” connect within my involvement in both writing and visual kinds of things.  Samples of some of my work are on Tumbler:

https://colourfieldsounding.wordpress.com/visual-art/

https://colourfieldsounding.wordpress.com/photography/

AmeriCymru: We note from your AmeriCymru profile that your ".....Welsh ancestral line can be traced back to Walerand de Monmouth, (b. 1165) who is my 25th great-grandfather!" Can you tell us a little more about your Welsh ancestry and genealogical researches?

Carole: A few years ago I became interested in learning more about my family history.  At that point I only knew that I have English ancestry on my father’s side (back to the pilgrim ship captain Myles Standish), and Danish/Welsh on my mother’s side. Now with so much information on the internet, I was able to begin constructing a family tree.  I have not been able to find much of a trail on my mother’s side yet, but on my father’s side, have been able to trace my ancestry way, way back, into the place where history becomes mythology, which is quite amazing!!!  At any rate, I am directly related to Walerand de Monmouth, and to Nest ferch Rhys (24th great-grandmother), and would love to travel to Wales at some point and actually visit Monmouth Castle, an important border castle, and the birthplace of Henry V.  I have discovered that many of my ancestors were from noble families, such as the de Neville’s (among others), and lived in castles that are still standing today.  I’m also directly related to King Alfred, and Charlemagne, among a number of other notable historical figures.  I’m especially interested in finding out more about the women in my geneology, and want to learn more about the people whose lives are not documented in the usual historical records. Within the past few years I’ve been able to travel to England a few times, and feel a very deep connection with that land.  Now that I know more about my ancestry I really look forward to traveling there again at some point before too long, and visiting Wales and Ireland, since I now know that my ancestors lived there as well.  I have much I want to research more deeply, and perhaps write about someday.

AmeriCymru: What's next for Carole Standish Mora?

Carole: I’m currently working on an MA/PhD in Depth Psychology with an emphasis in Jungian and Archetypal Studies, which requires lots of academic research and writing.  I have worked in the web and graphic design field for a number of years, and for a few years taught English Composition.  I loved teaching, am developing a couple of creative writing related workshops, and hope to return to teaching down the road.  In the meantime, I continue to write poetry, and am working on some longer pieces of fiction, two of which might want to become novels.

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

Carole: The AmeriCymru site is a wonderful resource for everything Welsh!  I especially appreciate the sense of a welcoming community, the special interest groups, competitions, a bookstore, courses and events.  I really encourage readers to explore the site more deeply and become involved. Since I have been a member I have noticed lots of development on the site, and feel very glad to have become a member.  I enjoy browsing the site from time to time and discovering new content. There is quite a bit of on going interaction on the site, and it feels good to connect more tangibly with my own roots, while also interacting with other people from Wales, or of Welsh ancestry.  While technology sometimes brings about a sense of disconnection and distance, sites like AmyriCymru bring people together in wonderful and immediate ways.  Thanks so much for the work you are doing to make this kind of community possible!

Details of next years competitions will be announced shortly and we hope that all our 2015 entrants will consider competing again in the new year. We will be contacting the winners and runners up of the poetry and short story competitions via email shortly.