Archive for 2025
Dawn dweud
Bu tipyn o sôn yn y wasg yn ddiweddar am sgiliau ‘dawn dweud’ neu ‘medrau llafar’, neu ‘oracy’, i ddefnyddio’r gair Saesneg anhardd – y gallu i fynegi eich hun mewn ffordd rugl a gramadegol, ac i wrando ar yr hyn mae pob eraill yn ei ddweud wrthych chi. Yn 2024 cyhoeddodd comisiwn annibynnol ar […]
The Tower of the Nets
How many Swansea people, when they stroll along the sea wall past the Observatory (the Tower of the Ecliptic) in the Maritime Quarter stop to look closely at the diminutive building that sits on its own on the other side of the path? (I say ‘Observatory’, but that building ceased to be the home of […]
Deep in Carmarthenshire
If you’re in love with green – I mean chlorophyll-saturated green, the lightest and deepest greens that nature can offer – there are fewer better places to find it than north-west Carmarthenshire. To wander through the fields and woods on the hills either side of the Tywi valley and its tributaries is to soak your […]
Tigers and dragons
What connects the histories and cultures of India and Wales? As it turns out, a complex nexus of links that have intertwined for centuries and continue to do so today. This is the theme of Tigers and dragons, a truly ambitious exhibition in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. It’s a great visual feast for the […]
Pentre Ifan o’r diwedd
Cyhoeddodd y diweddar John Davies yn 2010 lyfr o’r enw Cymru: y 100 lle i’w gweld cyn marw, gyda lluniau gwych gan Marian Delyth. Wrth i’r blynyddoedd wibio heibio, dwi’n dechrau becso am y bylchau personol sy’n bod o hyd yn y rhestr hon, a rhestrau tebyg o leoedd ‘hanfodol eu gweld’ yng Nghymru. Dros […]
Avebury and the unknowable
This week we spent a few hours in Avebury in Wiltshire. The modern village sits beside (and partly upon) the largest Neolithic stone circle in Britain. It was my first visit since my parents took me to see it in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The stones left a lasting impression on my child’s […]
Against SUVs
A couple of weeks ago the campaign group Transport & Environment published a report explaining how the height of SUVs increases the risk of injury and death to pedestrians, especially children. It seems that the bonnet height of these vehicles is increasing by half a centimetre a year. High bonnets decrease the field of the […]
‘Priorities for culture’: a pioneer Welsh Government strategy?
The Welsh Government’s just produced another document on culture. This one has the snappy title Priorities for culture. In case you’re interested, there are three priorities: ‘culture brings people together’, ‘celebrating Wales as a nation of culture’ and ‘culture is resilient and sustainable.’ I can already hear you thinking: ‘but two of these aren’t priorities, […]
Goodbye, Paul Durcan
When the news came recently that Paul Durcan had died, I pulled from the shelf my copy of his sequence of poems, Crazy about women, published by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1991. They’re all inspired by paintings in the Gallery’s collection. Some of the poems are long, some short; some playful, others penetrating […]
Esther Grainger, artist and activist
1 Introduction Around the turn of the century, when I was working in the National Library of Wales, I came across a smallish painting, in oil on board, called ‘Pontypridd at night’. It struck me at the time as a bold and unusual work, and whenever I saw it I’d stand and admire it. From […]