gwallter

  • Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin may have reached the surface of the moon fifty years ago this week.  But William Blake beat them to it, by 176 years.  What’s more, he had no use for the sophisticated technologies of the…

  • I first came across the name Rhys Trimble last month while wandering down a narrow lane from the castle to the main street in Denbigh.  At the bottom of Lôn Brombil (Broomhill Lane) a poem by him, ‘Moliant i Ddinbych’,…

  • Some of the solo days out I remember best are the result of fleeing from some ‘unmissable’ public event.  The marriage of Charles Windsor and Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981 was the excuse for a blissful day-long bike ride,…

  • Dros y Sul yma daw sŵn byddarol i’r awyr uwchben Bae Abertawe.  Yn ôl trefnwyr y Sioe Awyr, Cyngor Abertawe, ‘bydd perfformiadau erobatig trawiadol ac awyrennau hen a chyfoes unwaith eto’n gwefreiddio cannoedd ar filoedd o ymwelwyr’.  Y disgwyl yw…

  • O Positive, says his publisher, ‘is the long-awaited debut collection of poetry from Joe Dunthorne’.  Faber seem to have forgotten that they published an earlier, shorter collection in 2010 in the Faber New Poets series.  Several poems in this are…

  • Another interesting printed document has come, uninvited, through our letterbox.  It’s an A3 sheet, printed in colour and folded once.  Its publisher is an organisation calling itself the EFDD Group in the European Parliament.  EFDD, we’re told, stands for ‘Europe…

  • On the way to give a talk in Killay Library in Swansea last week I passed a pub I remembered seeing before.  It struck me as odd the first time.  Not because of its building or location, but because of…

  • Receiving post through the letterbox doesn’t give the anticipatory thrill it once did.  Personal messages are rare.  They’re outnumbered by personalised but corporate ones.  Today came a special invitation to view a retirement home in another part of Swansea, and…

  • The charity shops of Mumbles are an unending supply of serendipitous reading.  Often I pick up books in them that I should have read years, even decades ago.  (Another source of overlooked books, by the way, is the excellent podcast…

  • Diolch o galon i Ymddiriedolaeth Kyffin Williams am y gwahoddiad i draddodi Darlith Flynyddol Kyffin Williams eleni.  Rydw i’n ymwybodol o’r darlithoedd rhagorol gan gyfres hir o siaradwyr eraill ar Kyffin.  Maen nhw wedi treulio blynyddoedd yn ymchwilio ac yn…

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