St Govan's Chapel Poem published in 'Seeing Beyond The Surface'

 

St Govan's Chapel © D&C Gill

I have just had a poem, 'Above St Govan's Chapel', published in a rather unusual book.

Seeing beyond the Surface is 'a lighthearted and uplifting compilation of short stories and poems by and about people with disabilities'. Joanna Swank, the editor, writes in the context of assessing our fellow human beings, that 'it is a great thing to see what is beneath the surface.'

This volume has just been published and proceeds will benefit Abilities Solutions in Westville, New Jersey, USA.

Most of the contributors are based in the USA, but there are a couple of us from the UK. Another volume is in the pipeline, and if you might be interested in making a submission to Joanna, please visit the Seeing beyond the Surface website here.

My poem arose out of a visit to the chapel in a cleft in the cliff at St Govan's in Pembrokeshire, Wales. I was both elated (by the scene, and also by the Choughs that clipped the turf) and frustrated (by the access to the chapel itself). 'Above St Govan's Chapel' was written as part of a Disability Arts Cymru project, which resulted in the publication of Hidden Dragons/Gwir a Grymus, an anthology published by Parthian and launched at the Hay Festival in 2004.  

Puffin Quest (4): Winter Water Wings

Above: a single Puffin in a choppy sea off Strumble Head, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK, July 2009
We thought at first it was a castaway decoy (see below)...
... but then it dived.

Below: nesting Puffins, Spring 2009, Yorkshire, UK

'Water, water, every where'
Coleridge

Those who follow my blog will know by now that I have a particularly soft spot for the Puffin!

The BBC has published an amazing account of the winter 'Odyssey' undertaken by this amazing bird. The findings have been made thanks to the adoption of geolocator tags. I am so grateful to Steven of The Golden Fish for drawing my attention to the report. It makes fascinating reading.

The Puffin - or rather a particularly 'snowy-looking' Puffin photographed by Barbara Fryer off Scilly - features in the February 2010 issue of the RSPB magazine, Birds. This Puffin is not an albino, but rather a leucistic specimen, since its eyes and bill have the usual pigments, and its white feathers are edged in black. Albinism (when there is no melanin present) is a genetic mutation: leucism is the result of diluted pigmentation.

The magazine also refers to the story I mentioned on a previous occasion about those silent Sirens, the supposedly alluring Puffin decoys on Ramsey Island off Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Previous Puffin posts:

• OAPs aka Old Age Puffins
• Tufted ('Punk') Puffin *
• Transformative Moment
• A Post on Puffins

*This species reminds me of the rare and declining Northern Rockhopper Penguin. I am grateful to Crafty Green Poet, Juliet Wilson, for pointing me in the direction of the RSPB's Letter to the Future campaign (don't forget to click on the green leaf on CGP's blog).

Readers familiar with Coleridge might also like to support the Save the Albatross campaign.

Postcript: my thanks to Matt Merritt of Polyolbion (see comments for this Polyolbion post) for teaching me a new name today. Matt told me that while the scientific name for 'Puffin is Fratercula arctica, confusingly, Puffinus puffinus is Manx Shearwater.'

PPS: On the subject of decoys and bird conservation, take a look at this! 

Creature Feature (11): Wales News - Dolphins use Jellyfish in ocean football

We watched these dolphins (in the photos above and immediately below) in the Moray Firth,
near Fort George, Scotland, in September 2009

We spotted these Bottlenose Dolphins (in the photo below) off Pembrokeshire, Wales

• WalesOnline News - Jellyfish pay the penalty in ocean football

Those who read my blog regularly will know that I enjoy keeping up with Professor P. Brain's ecological and environmental discoveries. This story about Bottlenose Dolphins particularly caught my eye.

Creature Feature (10): Seal Saturday, 10 October 2009

Intimate moment: we watched his mother seal with her pup
on the Pembrokeshire coast.
I hope the pup is just shedding his thick white baby fur. He did not appear to be injured.

The seal pup feeding...

The mother goes off for a swim, leaving the pup in a sheltered spot.
She turns round to check that all is well.

The mother patrols the mouth of her cove,
ensuring that no predators come near her young.

Another furry seal pup a bit further round the coast.

You can watch our Seal Saturday video clip here...
... or here:

We went on to St David's Cathedral,
and had tea in the cloister in warm sunshine.
I can recommend the walnut cake, if you are in the area!

Buried Treasure: Tenby, 'Thalatta! Thalatta!'

Seth Apter of the Altered Page is hosting his 'Buried Treasure' event for those of us who have been taking part in his DisCo project (Disintegration Collaboration). Seth has asked participants to post a favourite blog entry from a while back. I have chosen one on Tenby, which you can read below. A year has elapsed, and I have now passed my National Open College Network programme in Art ('Arts and Crafts: Developing Basic Design Skills'). I have the certificate to prove it!

You can see two of my experimental card designs above. The red one formed part of my final portfolio: the blue one was fun to do! This is the old post (and my thanks to the Weaver of Grass for reminding me about Buried Treasure - see here, too!) ...

We were in Tenby (South Wales, UK) recently so that I could take photographs for my 'Design' course project. I decided to focus on the theme of 'Thalatta! Thalatta!' ('The sea! The sea!' - Xenophon), since the Tenby Sea Water Bath building has a Greek inscription on it. You can read the translation on the Blue Plaque. You may or may not agree with the sentiment ...

It seems an age ago since I began to learn Classical Greek at Newcastle (1979!).

While we were in Tenby, we thoroughly enjoyed seeing the art of Augustus John, Gwen John and others in the Tenby Museum and Art Gallery

First posted 11 June 20087 at 21.57 UK summer time.

P.S. You might like to see my thalatta poem on Dr Marc Latham's Folding Mirror Poetry site.

Riddles in the Sand (ii)

Left: Curious 'statues' in the sand at Newgale, Pembrokeshire, August 2008.
(Click on photo to enlarge: can you spot the mummy?)

We have been watching Dan Snow's version of Hadrian's life on BBC2. It has been a whirlwind of travel from Hadrian's Wall to North Africa, and from Egypt to Jerusalem.

On the subject of Ozymandias again, I was particularly pleased to see the Colossus (or colossi) of Memnon in the desert in Egyptian Thebes, and to see the graffiti (a mere 2000 years old) of four Greek epigrams in the Aeolic dialect by Julia Balbilla, incised on the left leg of one of the statues (some 3000 years old). Julia Balbilla accompanied the emperor and his wife, Sabina, as they travelled in Egypt in AD130. They listened to the colossal 'singing' statues at dawn on 19 and 20 November, in the hope that they would hear the voice of Memnon from the stone as it expanded under the heat of the rising sun. The Colossus was, in fact, not Memnon (son of the Greek Eos or 'Dawn') but Amenhotep III.

• Hadrian: Empire and Conflict at the British Museum
• Hadrian's Wall in the Great North Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne
  

Riddles in the Sand

I stumbled across this Sphinx in the sand at Newgale in Pembrokeshire some days ago. There was also a rather fine pyramid. Both works of art were about to fall victim to the sea as it raced up the beach.

I couldn't help thinking of Ozymandias ...

I was also curious to discover how many poems I could call to mind concerning both the sphinx of Egypt and the sphinx of Oedipus and Theban mythology.

Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sophocles come immediately to mind.

Blue is the colour

On our way back from a few days in Berea, Pembrokeshire, we decided to drive across the Preseli landscape to see the bluestones in their natural environment.

In the course of our meanderings in the hill country, we came across this plaque (left), nailed to a stone memorial in Mynachlogddu. The plaque was on the far side of the stone pillar in the lower photograph. Waldo Williams was a Welsh language Romantic poet.

We were particularly interested in the view from the memorial of Carn Menyn or 'The Cairn of Butter' (Carnmenyn on OS map) and Carn Meini (SA66 7RY).

This is real Stonehenge bluestone territory. Current Archaeology published what some may view as a controversial article, Message in the Stones, about the purpose of Stonehenge.





The air was very pure, and there were many interesting and unusual lichens on the stones. We watched a kestrel as we sat beside a stream (or series of mini-rapids, thanks to the exceptional August rainfall). It was a most evocative place.

Bluestone

I photographed this 'Millennium Bluestone' from the Preseli mountains at the National Botanic Garden of Wales in 2001.

I have recently enjoyed reading the article 'Beyond Stonehenge: Carn Meini and the Preseli Bluestones' (Timothy Darvill and Geoff Wainwright) in the Spring 2008 edition of 'Heritage in Wales', published by CADW.