Friday 22nd November: Fishguard is LIT.    ​

 

6pm: FLOW – FREE EVENT

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FLOW writers’ collective is an open group of keen wordsmiths working with prose and poetry. The group exists to provide a supportive environment for writers to share and refine their work.

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They are launching their first publication ‘Listen’. This collection of select works from the group takes its inspiration from the landscape, sea and community of Pembrokeshire. 

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For more information about the group or getting involved with Flow Collective activities contact lisaarts.therapy@gmail.com

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7pm: ‘Land, Language, Cultural Identity’ Literary Supper with Carwyn Graves, Prof Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost and Luke Waterson. Tickets £35.00

 

In this session Carwyn, Diarmuit and Luke discuss the depths of these relationships in both Wales and Ireland and the ways in which arts and culture, far from being ephemeral niceties, can ground us in a rapidly changing world.

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Two course Supper 

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‘Light in a Time of Darkness’ A talk by writer Luke Waterson with music from singer-songwriter Laila Woodward.

Wales, 1176: in a rain-drenched outpost of Christendom beset by war and bloodshed, the great lord of a newly-built castle is throwing a party, the like of which has never been seen before. It will be a contest of song, of poetry and music, open to all comers. And now all are coming…

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The reading/discussion will begin with a performance by Pontardawe-based singer-songwriter Laila Woodward who has supported the likes of The Shires and Sarah McQuaid.

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For tickets and bookings please call 01348 874540, or email Myles at simffonimara@gmail.com.

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Saturday 23rd November: Fishguard is LIT 

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2pm: ‘Inhabiting your Fiction’, a writers masterclass with Cynan Jones. Tickets £15​​

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6.30 for 7pm Literary Supper with Cynan Jones, Reading & Conversation. Advance booking essential. Tickets £35.00.

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Followed by ‘Seven Poems of Stillness’ R.S. Thomas music composed by Hilary Tann performed by cellist Daniel Davies 

Seven Poems of Stillness for violin cello with poems by R.S. Thomas was composed in response to a request from Dr Rhian Davies, Artistic Director of the Gwŷl Gregynog Festival, to whom the work is dedicated. The work was written to be premiered at Manafon Church, where poet R.S. Thomas was rector, on the occasion of the centennial of his birth (2013). In this continuing cycle, each of the seven poems presents an aspect of the poet’s relationship to God. The movement titles are evocative and are taken from the following poems:

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1“the Air / A Staircase For Silence” (Kneeling)

2 “the Great Brush Has Not Rested” (The View From The Window)

3 “like Some Huge Moth Out Of The Darkness” (The Empty Church)

4 “as The Interior Of A Cathedral” (The Moorland)

5 “Bright Field / Lit Bush” (The Bright Field)

6 “the Possibility Of Your Presence” (Cones)

7 “nights That Are So Still” (The Other)

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The central slow movement,1V, contains echoes of the Welsh hymn Llef. The faster movements,11 and V, suggest stillness at the centre of a spinning motion ‘renewed daily’ (11), ‘the stars themselves gyring down,…the cone’s point toward towards which we soar’ (V). The darkest movement is 111, paralleling the poem The Empty Church. Movements 1 and V1 are poems of spiritual listening. Reflecting the sentiment of R S Thomas’s poem The Other, the final movement, V11, evokes ‘wave on wave on the long shore’. (©️Hilary Tann)