Sunny Swansea

On my (kind of) holidays – term ended last week which means 3 weeks without night-classes – so have been writing and enjoying my free evenings.  It was lovely to go to the National Poetry Competition awards on Wednesday and catch up with lots of friends I hadn’t seen for a while, particularly Antony Dunn, who got a commendation for his moving poem In Vitro.

On Thursday night I read at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, where there’s a permanent Thomas exhibition full of interesting objects: the suit he wore the week before he died (borrowed because all his were dirty), letters, sketches…  I did end the evening watching Embarrassing Bodies with a Nandos on my knee (hotel rooms do bad things to me), but made up for it by exploring the city the next day: laverbread and cockles for breakfast (the laverbread was interesting though rather salty), then a walk through the marina to the super-soft beach, backed by dunes.  Paddled (it was wincingly cold), read a bit of Dylan Thomas and collected some shells, getting in tune with my Welsh blood (I’m an 8^th Welsh, I realized at Christmas. My Granny Pollard was called Eirlys, which apparently is Welsh for snowdrop).  Liked the city a lot anyway.

Here’s my favourite Thomas poem – a writer’s manifesto, always worth rereading. (‘Sullen art’ is such a brilliant description of poetry isn’t it?)

 In my craft or sullen art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

By Dylan Thomas

This weekend Sian, a friend from high school, stayed with me in London and we saw the wonderful Jeremy Deller exhibition at the Haywood.  I dined with him once at the Chelsea Arts Club and he’s a modest, brilliant man (he also picked the guest poem when I edited Magma 50, opting for a Neil Young lyric).  Loved it all – the hunt for Bez that took in Affleck’s Palace, quotes from Morrissey in the style of evangelical posters, a recreation of a Bury café serving free tea, his restaging of the miner’s strike at Orgreave and 3D bats.

Makes Damien Hirst (who opens just down the South Bank at the Tate in the next few weeks) look like the thoughtless purveryor of corporate tat that he is…  We also had the best burgers at the Lucky Chip pop-up at the Seabright Arms -I went for the ‘Kevin Bacon’, Sian went ‘Tom Selleck’ (involved a pineapple ring).

Now I’m off to teach a school for Arvon at Lumb Bank, followed by a Windsor wedding and a few days in Naples.  Freedom!  Enjoy Easter….