Category: books
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Rambling women
Hay-on-Wye on a sleepy summer Monday outside Festival time is a fine place to be. True, you have an acute feeling of being one of a dwindling number of ageing middle class readers as you wander from second-hand bookshop to second-hand bookshop. But serendipity, so painfully missing from an Amazon search, is a subtle and…
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Nightwalking
The literature of walking is large. It’s grown quickly in recent years, in part as an offshoot of the ‘new nature writing’. Most of it, though, is concerned with walking in the light of day. Nightwalking has received much less treatment. Frédéric Gros, in his recent A philosophy of walking (2014) fails to mention it.…
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Cymry’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf
Ydych chi’n chwilio am lyfr dibynadwy a darllenadwy yn Gymraeg sy’n dangos hanes y Rhyfel Mawr mewn geiriau a lluniau, o safbwynt pobl Cymru? Os felly, does dim angen arnoch chwilio ymhellach na Cymry’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf gan Gwyn Jenkins, cyfrol odidog a gyhoeddwyd yr wythnos ddiwethaf gan Y Lolfa. Dyma lyfr hardd (ie, hardd,…
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In the Chair
Today the e-book version of my book In the chair is published by Parthian Books. As the subtitle says, it’s in essence a practical guide: ‘how to guide groups and manage meetings’. Its aim is to help people who find themselves in the position of Chair to learn the craft and become successful. Strangely little…
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Celf a chrefydd: George Herbert a’r anffyddiwr
Rai blynyddoedd yn ôl ces i wahoddiad i ymddangos ar y rhaglen radio Beti a’i phobl, i sgwrsio â Beti George a dewis ychydig o recordiadau. Un ohonynt oedd darn o waith sy’n bwysig iawn imi, ers y tro cyntaf imi ei glywed rhyw ugain mlynedd yn ôl: Spem in alium, y motét i ddeugain…
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Erlid ac alltud: Heini Gruffudd a W.G. Sebald
Does fawr o wirionedd yn yr honiad na all llyfrau Cymraeg ddod i afael â digwyddiadau mawr y byd. Ond os ydych chi’n dod i hyd i rywun sy’n ceisio ei honni, yr ateb syml yw ‘Darllenwch Yr erlid gan Heini Gruffudd’. Erchyllterau gwaethaf yr ugeinfed ganrif – dinistr yr Iddewon gan y Natsïaid –…
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Emily Dickinson’s reticent volcano
It’s taken a long time for Emily Dickinson to come out. During her lifetime (1830-86) only ten of her roughly 1,800 extant poems were published, some of them without her knowledge. After her death her manuscripts lay disregarded by all but a few. It was not till 1955 that anything close to a complete edition…
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Walking poets
In 2012 the Huddersfield poet Simon Armitage published a book called Walking home, about a trip he made on foot two years earlier from north to south along the length of the Pennine Way. He started without a penny in his pocket, paying for his accommodation and meals through poetry readings he gave at various…
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A brief note on bedside books
Back in the days when Glyn Tegai Hughes and R. Gerallt Jones were Wardens there was a custom that most overnight visitors to Gregynog appreciated as an unusual but delightful practice. Somewhere in your bedroom – usually on the mantlepiece if you were placed in the old house – you’d find a small collection of…