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.”
Bookseller, Rosie Smith in Shelf Life
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.
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→
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.
The technical team at the Crescent Arts Centre prevented covid from doing its worst by facilitating Csilla Toldy (who’d tested positive that morning) to join us via zoom. We missed Viviana Fiorentino who wasn’t well enough to appear.
A key feature of this poetry collection is that four poets, two living in N Ireland and two living in Wales, wrote a poem each with me and my mentor for the collection, Glen Wilson contributed a poem of his own. The bulk of the collection is my work.
Csilla Toldy reading via zoom
I was very pleased that the eminent, British-Hungarian poet, George Szirtes has written of the collection:
“Sanctuary is primarily physical but it is more than that. It offers a spiritual place of safety too. It is a token of generosity from the giver and a source of inner comfort for the receiver. Beyond that, the experience depends on much else in the long run but that first act is invaluable and restorative.
“In this book, the poet Angela Graham has generously invited Italian-born poet and novelist, Viviana Fiorentino; the Welsh writer, Phil Cope; the Hungarian- born poet and translator Csilla Toldy; Irish poet Glen Wilson; and an Iranian poet living in Wales to offer a poem each on the theme of Sanctuary.
The collection is full of moving, serious poems and individual voices. This too is sanctuary.”
That is exactly what I was aiming for: a book that would embody, to some degree, the hosting aspect of sanctuary.
Phil Cope reading
But sanctuary has many facets: the environment, the spiritual, the body and the self, the goal of some migration, the refuge of those in peril…
These themes are explored in the collection.
In the launch some of the other talents of the contributing poets came to the fore.
Glen Wilson performing his song ‘There Must Be Somewhere’
Glen Wilson composed and performed a song prompted by the collection: There Must Be Somewhere; Phil Cope illustrated his reading of his poem with his own fine photographs; we saw a film by Csilla and Viviana on their experience of coming to live in Northern Ireland from, respectively, Italy and Hungary.
I loved the fact that the audience joined in near the end. They had been invited to add a leaf to the ‘Sanctuary Tree’. Just as, near holy wells and sacred sites, a tree is sometimes held to be a special means of communication with something beyond the ordinary, so we had a tree to which people added their aspiraitons, hopes, prayers. Some of the audience read out their leaf message. This underlined our common being in the world.
Viviana Fiorentino (left) and Csilla Toldy with the Sanctuary Tree earlier in the Festival
And we heard an experience that had taken place on the bus en route to the venue – of encountering anti-immigrant feeling and summoning instead a sanctuary mindset, a refusal to let ht enegative dominate. This stressed how sanctuary can be experienced in the everyday. How we can each be a sanctuary.
The poets shared their poems and the audience shared something of their own lives. The leaves on the tree burgeoned.
I’m delighted that this 48-page pamphlet of poetry will be published by Seren Books on the 11th April 2022.
Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, ‘Moon’ and Csilla Toldy worked with me to write a poem each on the theme. Glen Wilson was my mentor and contributes a poem.
Sanctuary is – urgent. The pandemic has made people crave it; political crises and war are denying it to millions; the earth is no longer our haven. This theme has enormous traction at a time of existential fear − especially among the young − that nowhere is safe. Even our minds and our bodies are not refuges we can rely on. Truth itself is on shaky ground.
This pamphlet of 31 poems addresses these critical situations from the inside. How we can save the earth, ourselves and others? How valid is the concept of a ‘holy’ place these days? Are any values still sacrosanct? We all deserve peace and security, but can these be achieved without exploitation?
Belfast-born Angela Graham divides her time between Wales and Northern Ireland. She has designed this collection to embody the hosting, welcoming aspect of Sanctuary. Alongside her own poems she invited four other poets, two from Wales and two from Northern Ireland, to work with her in writing a poem each.
‘Moon’ is the pseudonym for an Iranian poet now living in Wales. Writer and photographer, Phil Cope from the Garw Valley in Glamorgan is an expert on the holy wells and shrines of the British Isles. In Northern Ireland, poet and novelist, Viviana Fiorentino is an economic migrant from Italy who works with migrants and prisoners of conscience; film maker and poet, Csilla Toldy fled communist Hungary for a ‘free’ life in the West. The fifth poet, Glen Wilson (winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing), acted as mentor for Angela’s work and contributes a poem on migration.
Angela Graham is a distinguished producer for TV. She was Development Producer on the BBC series The Story of Wales presented by Huw Edwards (2 BAFTA Cymru Awards). She was producer and co-writer of the Oscar entrant cinema feature Branwen (6 BAFTA Cymru nominations and Best Film at the Celtic Media Festival). Her short story collection A City Burning (Seren 2020) was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her poems have been published widely in journals such as The North, Poetry Wales, The Interpreter’s House; and often anthologised, most recently in Local Wonders (Dedalus Press), Words From The Brink and A470 (Arachne Press) and Washing Windows Too (Arlen House).
Angela says: “Before this work I thought of Sanctuary as a place but now I understand it’s something I have to be.”
How had the pandemic affected my work? It was a pleasure to be invited to contribute to the annual journal of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University where I read English between 1975 and 1978.
Amongst the strongest of covid’s impacts for me was a repeated sense of indignation at how often government failed to take proper care of the most vulnerable.
A lovely start to the year – a writerly celebration of Nollaig na mBan (Christmas of the Women). It was an Irish tradition that women had a day off household work on the feast of the Epiphany, the 6th January, the last day of the Christmas season).
On Wednesday 5th January at 17.30 ET/10.30pm UK time) the Irish Network DC has arranged a zoom reading of work from North Star, an anthology of work by female writers from Northern Ireland. This was published by Women Aloud NI, a burgeoning network of women writers.
Angeline King, Gráinne Tobin, Shelley Tracey and I will be reading our work from the anthology.
The event is supported by the Irish Embassy in the USA, the Northern Ireland Bureau (the Northern Ireland Executive’s diplomatic arm in the USA) and the Irish American Partnership.
I’m particularly pleased to be reading a poem which has a link to America. As for many Irish people, emigration has resulted in my having relatives across the United States and this poem is about an appearance of my grandfather at his great-grand-daughter’s wedding, all the way from America.
It was a pleasure to review Georgi Gill’s impressive debut poetry collection LIMBO for The Cardiff Review. An immensely assured narrative through 65 poems set in the Berlin of 1931.
