It was a great pleasure to have my three-poem sequence The Magi Remember published online by The Lonely Crowd. I also had the opportunity to write an introductory article to the poems, Dreams and Realities.
A strand in this is about the work of a Cardiff-based charity, The Birth Partner Project which provides volunteer virth partners to suppot women seeking sanctuary who would otherwise face pregnancy, birth and early motherhood alone.
What a lovely bookshop Cardiff’s Shelf Life is. Small, but perfectly formed if what you’re looking for are books that are radical.
What does ‘radical’ mean?
Owner, Rosie Smith favours stocking less-heard voices. She wants book-buyers to come across topics and people and situations that they may not have previously known about. She says:
“I want to engender solidarity between readers and the people they read about, and between communities. I stock the kind of books that can foster compassion. I hope they encourage a less individualistic approach to life. I’m a fan of collectivism.”
Since those are my ideals too I am very glad that Shelf Life now has my books
It was a pleasure to interviewed about my writing by poet, Taz Rahman as part of his long-running Just Another Poet series of conversations.
We talked about my poetry collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere and my shrot story collection A City Burning. Information about the books here
Being asked questions stimulates some thought! Most of the time I am writing, with a sense of purpose, yes, but not according to a theory. At some point it is certainly useful to be asked about genre, approach and so on. Reflecting aloud does provide insights and perspective that might otherwise be lacking.
You can read about Taz’s own work here
I am so impressed with everything about Bargoed Library. I’ve just been there as Libraries Wales’ Author of the Month for December to read from my poetry collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere and my short story collection https://bit.ly/3iHHw9u A City Burning.
The library itself is in a bold re-fashioning of Hanbury Chapel in the heart of the town. This beautiful building, dating from 1906, now contains a scaled-down chapel, where the reading took place, and a full range of modern library facilities. Historical Details on CADW coflein site. Fascinating.
The staff could not have done more to make it a pleasant experience for me. I could see beforehand that they were making great outreach efforts. They printed out 3 of my Christmas poems as cards that attendees could take away after the reading. They had library copies of my books on display and I was able to offer copies for sale. Continue reading Brilliant Bargoed Library
Libraries Wales Author of the Month December 2022, Angela Graham reflects on the role of public libraries in her writing life.
Cardiff Central and the Canton branch are the libraries of Wales which I know best. In their different ways, but working together, they have supplied me with a range of books which I could never have accessed on my own, either because of cost or because a librarian’s advice steered me towards something I would have issed unaided.
The university libraries of Wales have been a terrific resource, not only for books, but images and film, voice recordings and maps and documents.
What they all have in common is that they offer plentitde, ample resources, more than I imagined; and in that ‘more’ they broaden my outlook and extend my reach into my own life and the lives of others. They nourish. They nurture.
Libraries exemplify the Common Good. They’re a demonstration of how resources, that might have been restricted to a few, can be shared by many. Continue reading The Paradise of Libraries
Moving beyond ‘home’ to the concept of ‘sanctuary’ is this collection, Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere, in which author Graham also includes/invites poems from five other contributors. The theme of the book is that, in these turbulent times, sanctuary can be quite hard to find. Where does it lie? Well, here are poems which explore that query and attempt to find out, evoking ideas and evincing emotions along the way as we traverse bombed cities and chapels, evacuation sites and shrines, lakes, holy wells, and even the body itself which, in the poem Chronic is no longer a refuge but a place in which “pain expels me from myself”. Eventually, the book leads to a hopeful conclusion, in which the poet affirms, “We are a home for one another”. This is the bottom line and, fittingly, the final line of the collection.
I found the poems in this book finely written and thoughtful. Despite the intelligence and philosophical loftiness, which I sometimes feel prohibits poets from delving into the dirt via language and image, Graham is a poet who doesn’t shy away from this, delivering, as well as literal bombs, the ‘f-bomb’ in one poem; neither is she one who is unable to explore or touch on concepts of divinity and use of the word ‘God’, which I find more f-bomb prone, gritty poets perhaps feel their own fear of and are less likely to address. Therefore, this comes across as an open-minded collection, and the poems, as mentioned, are very finely wrought, whether by Graham or by her guests. This is a generous inclusion, of course, but Graham is a poet who is skilled and sublime enough, I imagine, not to feel any threat from it or, indeed, from anyone or anything at all.
Buy at Seren Books: Sanctuary
All five reviews:
New poetry for August: home, sanctuary and radical Welsh verse
MAB JONES
https://mabjones.com/
The book was supported by a SIAP Award from Arts Council of Northern Ireland via The National Lottery.
I’m catching up with a very busy July. We had a great launch of Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere supported by Seren Books and CABAN bookshop in Cardiff’s Pontcanna.
Bookshop owner, Elin Edwards introduced me to the intriguing Dance Studio in King’s Road Yard. One whole wall is mirror, or gold curtaining, if you prefer that. Very atmospheric.
The audience had great questions after the reading and there was a sense of dialogue because of the contributions people made, bringing their own experience or reflections to the issues that included war, migration, the role of women in conflict, the fate of the environment and the creation of peace and security.
I felt very fortunate to have such an attentive and engaged audience who allowed me to feel that the poems ‘worked’ and communicated well.
Jenny White, Arts and Culture writer for Wales’s leading newspaper The Western Mail gave Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere a double-page spread recently.
What is sanctuary and where do we find it? Poet and TV producer, Angela Graham discusses her debut poetry collection and its powerful central theme.
Continue reading Western Mail features ‘Sanctuary’ poetry collection
WHAT IS SANCTUARY – AND HOW CAN IT BE LIVED?
What rises in our imagination? The holy or the helpless; the planet we live on together or the contested part of it that is the goal of desperate migrants? Is sanctuary a place, a person or a state of mind? Sanctuary is incontestably a key issue of our time and a major driver of politics. These Welsh writers create together a new stage in our poetic engagement with sanctuary.
NODDFA − A SUT MAE BYW YNDDI?
Beth sy’n codi yn ein dychymyg? Y sanctaidd neu’r digymorth; y blaned yr ydym yn byw arni gyda’n gilydd neu’r rhan ddadleuol ohoni sef nod mudwyr? Ai lle, unigolyn neu ffordd o feddwl yw noddfa? Heb os nac oni bai, noddfa yw broblem ein cyfnod ac yn bwnc llosg mewn gwleidyddiaeth. Dyma’r ysgrifenwyr hyn o Gymru yn mynd ati gyda’i gilydd i greu cam newydd yn ein hymgysylltiad barddonol â’r testun noddfa.
The panel members in this bilingual (Welsh/English) session were former National Poet of Wales, Gwyneth Lewis; co-architect of the Nation of Sanctuary movement, Rev Aled Edwards; novelist of migration and social activist, Dylan Moore and Joseph Gnagbo, a former refugee from the Ivory Coast now living in Wales.
Continue reading Cardiff Poetry Festival – Poetry and Sanctuary
Cardiff Poetry Festival took place over the last weekend in July. I was delighted to read from my collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere alongside Hannah Hodgson and Ben Wilkinson in a session of poetry newly published by Seren Books.
Hannah Hodgson’s 163 Days employs an innovative format to chronicle her hospital stay and treatments for a devastating illness: extracts from doctors’ notes are juxtaposed with her impressions of the same events. The objective and subjective side by side. Ot, it should be said, the supposedly objective.
The interplay between patient’s and doctor’s perspectives gives the reader a seldom experienced stand point. We spot the subjective seeping into the medical records of treatment – the doctor’s take, not simply on the symptoms, but on the patient who is experiencing them. This either clarifies or clouds the decisions taken. To hear the patient’s voice almost simultaneously is to encounter a different kind of authority, that of the suffering subject, who is perfectly capable of reading the symptoms the doctor (unconsciously) presents but who is accorded little recognised power. Power, its facets and its use, is a constant throughout the book.
Although one might say that the poetry in this book resides in the patient’s contributions, which employ devices typical of poetry as contrasted with the prosaic and precise medical use of language, part of the book’s appeal is that the affect-less medical notes acquire an emotional intensity as they collide or elide with the poetic voice.
This voice is robust but never strident. This admirable self-control achieves a great thing: it allows the reader to supply the anger, bafflement, hurt.
A memorable, epic journey.
Ben Wilkinson’s new collection examines relationships, sometimes from a wry perspective, as a poem’s protagonist grows in self-knowledge – painful as well as uplifting – with a deft handling of a variety of forms.
It is particularly interesting to see a contemporary poet ‘coming to terms with’ a long-dead one, in this case, Verlaine: proof that poetic voice can remain vital, challenging and inspiring.
Running (an art or a sport?) is here given a poetic ‘voice’. One way for those not devotees to get inside an activity that can seem from the outside supremely individual.