April 27th Poetry Day Ireland – Theme ‘Message in a Bottle’.
The Hamely Pen is a group of writers in Ulster-Scots
Here we step forward with a taster of work – our message to the world
from Anne McMaster, Steve Dornan, Robert Campbell, Al Millar and me.
Enjoy!
We’ve been treated to a year full of delightful and heart-wrenching collections from all across Wales, and naming our choices has been particularly tough for our contributors. That said, we take great pleasure in revealing the best Welsh poetry releases of 2022
Written in collaboration with poets (Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, Csilla Toldy and Glen Wilson), Angela Graham’s Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere is an innovative collection that Graham herself states ‘moves from war, to migration, to the alienation imposed by illness (a kind of expulsion from the sanctuary of Eden), to the numinosity of the natural world, to the pandemic, and ends with an assertion that sanctuary is something we can be.’
Read Angela Graham’s introduction to Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere here.
This collection, published by Welsh company Seren Books ,was developed with funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
By Caroline Bracken:
Angela Graham’s poetry collection ‘Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere‘ is an interesting concept. As well as her own poems, it includes poems she wrote collaboratively with Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, Mahyar and Csilla Toldy.
Her mentor Glen Wilson also contributed a poem, ‘Border Crossing, Reynosa to Hidalgo’, a gorgeous poem with more questions than answers:
‘There is buzzing behind the bevel of the two-way mirror,
I imagine the voices of the hidden judges there’
The collaborative poems all allow the contributing poets’ voices to shine and feel very different to Graham’s own. For example Mahyar’s ‘You’ is end-rhymed:
‘When I was drinking shot after shot
When I was reading Rubaiyat
When I was reading Khayyam’s couplets
When the book got wet with my tears’ droplets’
Csilla Toldy’s ‘Sanctum Trilogy’ is written in three sections, ‘Resistance’ ‘Refuge’ and ‘Resilience’ and is more experimental in form:
‘Forget the borders, tie up your tongue
here you are safe – between the walls of this place.
Stay put for now, We will decide –
wait
w a i t
w a i t
w a i t’
Phil Cope gives us a panoramic, bird’s-eye sequence of the Welsh landscape:
‘A brace of peregrines, monogamous
though solitary throughout the year,
rendezvous up here each April,
drawn by this cliff’s magnetism,
egged on by legacy,
reliable in the knowledge of
a ledge, secure on Darren Fawr
to raise two chicks, then leave.’
Angela Graham’s wonderful poem ‘A Heerd tha Sodjer on tha Radio’ which won the Linen Hall Ulster Scots Writing Competition is included. Her other poems work best when they steer away from prose and allow the image to be seen, as in ‘Annunciation, Visitation’
‘After the angel left her what was the girl to do?
I see her stand, go to the window,
look out at the utterly familiar street.
A neighbour, jovial, passes and she smiles
─ too soon for speech. She looks down
at her utterly familiar hand
resting on the white stone sill.’
And ‘Persian New Year’
‘Let me give you gorse,
the ungraspable, the unlikely
solder-drops splattered on my hedges
by the sun torching its way out of winter.’
The last word goes to Viviana Fiorentino, from ‘In This Sanctuary’
‘You blue tit, jackdaw or young doe
you, overflow, the breaker of borders
of species, you know it will not matter
that you were males or females, your voice
is
singing’
“hugely experimental… as praxis, the project seems politically perfect, an unselfish poetic gesture underlining the ‘unevenness’ of sanctuary that is genuinely thought-provoking.” Tim Murphy
https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/03/london-grip-poetry-review-angela-graham/
I was delighted to read from my poetry collection at arts space, The Green Room above Sustainable Wales’s colourful, intriguing shop, SUSSED Wales. This is an ethical community co-operative selling fair trade local and international goods in James Street, Porthcawl. Commitment to a just food policy is a major focus. What better time than the start of
https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/get-involved/current-campaigns/fairtrade-fortnight/
A special dinner will be held at Porthcawl’s Atlantic Hotel to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sustainable Wales. 8th March. Tickets here. Continue reading Sanctuary reading at Sustainable Wales
As soon as I learned about Poetry as Commemoration I wanted to write something for it.
2022-2023 marks the centenary of one of the most challenging periods in Irish history including the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the establishment of the Free State and the ensuing Civil War. As we embark on this difficult phase of the Decade of Centenaries, Poetry as Commemoration invites communities to turn to poetry as a mode of understanding and expression.
It is an all-island initiative, organised by the Irish Poetry Reading Archive at University College Dublin and the Irish Government’s Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
My poem below is available to read on the site:
‘The Irish Civil War, County Tipperary, Summer, 1922’ by Angela Graham
I’m a big fan of initiatives that connect people and enable sharing so I was very pleased to be interviewed by Carys Bradley-Roberts of Creative Cardiff.
Creative Cardiff is a network which connects people working in any creative organisation, business or job in the Cardiff region. By encouraging people to work together we believe that we can make Cardiff the most creative place it can be.
Creative Firsts puts the spotlight on people’s first ventures into creativity in a particular field. My Creative First has been moving from film and TV into the world of books via Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere my poetry collection, and my short story collection A City Burning. I had a lot to learn.
I describe the experience in the interview here.
Mae fe ar gael yn y Gymraeg hefyd / It’s available in Welsh too: Cam Creadigol Cyntaf
Take a look at other Creative Firsts here
I was delighted to be invited by Alan Roderick to read at The Murenger pub in Newport’s High Street. The name is memorable. The original murenger collected taxes that maintained the city’s defences in the medieval period. This monthly gathering is one of the most popular gigs for writers in south Wales and, of course, to add to its fame there is Jon Gower’s short story collection, The Murenger .
It is wonderful to be among people who really love writing. There’s no mistaking the genuine commitment to the written word. In the Open Mic session we heard from regulars and a newcomer. The audience was attentive and responsive. and Alan Roderick is a generous and arm host. He gave me a copy of his poetry colleciton, ‘After You’d Gone’. At the station on my way home, I was engrossed in it and missed my train! Apart from that, what more could a writer want?
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.
