Poetry at Strata Florida Abbey

                       

 The church next to Strata Florida Abbey.
Dafydd ap Gwilym's yew tree is to the left of the picture.   

                                                                        

Recently I went to the Open Day of the Centre for Advanced Celtic Studies at Strata Florida, or Ystrad Fflur, the site of a Cistercian abbey. Although the weather was cold and grey, it was a truly lovely and inspiring day. Just what I needed as I had been decidedly lacking in hwyl (enthusiasm, humour) lately.

The abbey is about a mile from the village of Pontrhydfendigaid, Ceredigion, some 15 miles from where I live. Originally founded in 1164, many important manuscripts are thought to have been written there, namely Brut y Tywysogion, The Chronicle of the Princes, a major source for early Welsh history;  Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, The White Book of Rhydderch, which contains the stories of the Mabinogi, and the Hendregadredd Manuscript which contains an anthology of poems of the 12^th and 13^th century Beirdd y Tywysogion (the Poets of the Princes) or Y Gogynfeirdd (the Not So Early Poets). Around 1330 a number of poems by contemporary poets were added and there is one poem of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s which is probably written in his own hand.

Dafydd ap Gwilym was born not far away in the village of Penrhyncoch and it is likely that he was educated at Strata Florida by the monks and was buried in the churchyard there when he died. A fellow-poet, Gruffydd Gryg, wrote an elegy to him, addressing the yew tree which grew over his grave. It was the custom then, however, for poets to write elegies to each other when they were still alive so it isn’t certain that he is buried there. However it is thought that the yew is old enough to have existed in his time and there is a memorial to him placed there.

 

Yr ywen i oreuwas
Ger mur Ystrad Fflur a’i phlas;
Da Duw wrthyd, gwynfyd gwŷdd,
Dy dyfu yn dŷ Dafydd.

This yew-tree for the best of men,
Near the walls of Strata Florida and its hall;
God’s blessing on you, happy tree,
For growing as a house for Dafydd.

In an earlier exchange of funeral odes with Dafydd, Gruffydd had written:

Tristach weithian bob cantref,
bellach naw digrifach nef.

Sadder now is every area of land,
but heaven is nine times more joyful.

Dafydd Johnston gave a talk among the ruins about the poets of the abbey, quoting from the medieval poet Dafydd Nanmor’s poem about Strata Florida. He tells how the Abbot  Rhys ‘cut ten complete windows, half the cost of this went in glass’; the abbey had roofs of 'heavy lead', 'so woven as to leave no holes for ice, water, snow or rain'. Between her walls were 'acres for burying lords' and there was music too – he heard the fair sounds of treble, mean (the refrain or chorus of a song) and burden there.  He related how there was a great belfry, lime dressed, huge and white, with a cock on top of it. It was so large that if Noah’s flood were to come again, all the saints inside would be protected.

The talk filled the empty spaces of the abbey with the words of the poets and thoughts and images of how magnificent it had been once…

No sun
but the stones
shine with history 

After this it was time to go and learn about cynghanedd from Eurig Salisbury who perched on top of the wall by the garden. It had a rather medieval feel to it – being taught something in the open air, the words blown on the cold wind. Not so much a hedge school as a wall school perhaps… It was a very clear and concise introduction to complicated Welsh metres with an excellent handout. I was motivated the next day to try a few lines of (rather clumsy) cynhanedd sain to give an image of the day:

Sitting in the cold in the fold of Strata Florida
hearing the tale of the travail of the venerable
I catch sight of the flight of the falcon
which soars in the sky like the sigh of a soul

Ideally the lines should have 7 syllables (such as in 'Make fish the dish of the day' - remember that ad?) although I think more are permitted.

And then back to the impressive West Gate to hear poems about Strata Florida by the Welsh poet, Gwyneth Lewis. CADW commissioned her to write them in recognition of its literary and cultural associations and to celebrate the re-opening of the abbey. The poet said that this was for her the high point of her career and she planned later to light a candle at Dafydd ap Gwilym’s memorial ‘in gratitude and humility’.

The English poem had, at times, a bare, somewhat staccato feel to it, and it wasn’t until I saw it written down that I felt I understood the concept underlying it (although who knows whether it is what the poet intended). To me it seemed to contain, in almost concrete fashion, some of the feel of the abbey. Its incomplete sentences were fragments, like the surviving stone fragments of the abbey... only the great West door remaining intact, offering us through through absence rather than presence an opening into something greater, an expanding universe. But the poem ends by reminding us that we have to find our own door; a gateway to all ages, to the timeless in the temporal. Perhaps the picture below will give you some idea of what I mean.

                       …Pass
Through this door
Into Christ, the expanding
Universe. Dimension:
Wonder. Uplands bare,
Riches below…

… This
Door. Find your own elsewhere.
Now. The future. Then. Then now.

I remembered that the medieval Welsh poets were sometimes referred to as builders and their poems were not composed but built...

The Welsh poem was quite different, the poet asking for her ashes to be scattered in Ystrad Fflur (which in an article in CADW's magazine Etifeddiaeth Y Cymry she describes as being a cornerstone and frame of her life) and ending:

...Gwisgaf y gwynt, fy nghorff
Ac, mewn munud daw awel lem
O'r mynydd gan iasu'r glaswell yn emau byw.

(I'll wear my body, the wind, and in a moment a cold breeze from the mountain will thrill the grass into living gems.)

                                                                 ***

Lunch was a cream cheese and salad roll I’d prepared earlier, finished off with digestive biscuits and a flask of tea. I ate it sitting in the car which was consolingly warm, looking out over one of the fields. Then it was a spell of finding out how to add shapes to a mosaic of an archway with the words STRATA FLORIDA above it. Rob Turner is the artist commissioned to display the poems in a permanent setting at the abbey. You can read about his design and progress HERE 

There was a final talk on manuscripts and princes by Ann Parry Owen with a very useful illustrated booklet she had produced (I only managed to get one of the Welsh copies but it is proving very good for me having to translate it). Before going home, I went into the visitors' centre to’ make my own tile’. This consisted of buying the tile which resembles unset plaster of paris (but has dried into something that feels very light, rather like polystyrene) and then choosing one of the designs from the several tiles which have survived at the abbey and impressing it on the tile. I decided on ‘the man with the mirror’ – perhaps a symbol of vanity although other interpretations suggest he is a hunter. I like to think he’s a poet of the green wood holding up a mirror…

And finally, not to be forgotten, the Flowers - bluebells and the promise of foxgloves .

Haiku Competition (Kukai)

There's just over one day left to send in your submissions for the Second International Kukai  (Haiku contest). The topic this month is 'kite/s' and you can send up to three haiku.

I sent three in to the last one, which had sparrow/s as its topic. None of them distinguished themselves but I enjoyed writing them and - since the entrants read and vote on all the haiku (excepting one's own) - judging the entries. It gave me an insight into the judging process (very difficult) and there was an interesting range of haiku covering many aspects of sparrows, their habits, interactions with humans, and indeed the use of them as metaphors for the ordinary person.

While writing this I became aware that I hadn't read the instructions properly this time and had written three haiku about the red kites that are regular visitors to the airspace above my garden :-) So back to the drawing board...

I see these Kukai as an exercise, a little like small stones, for catching the moment. An opportunity to write many haiku I probably wouldn't have written otherwise and to read many more.

Why don't you give it a try?

Celebrating May with Dafydd ap Gwilym

Cytisus scoparius photo MPF Newcastle, UK

May 1^st, Calan Mai. 

But it's cold and gloomy here in West Wales and the may blossom is not yet out. I think it might be some time… Here are some lines of an Ode, by the 14^th  century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym  (although I believe it has also been attributed to the 15^th century poet Robin Ddu in some of the manuscripts). It contrasts January and May, winter and summer, but could be mistaken for a description of our current weather in the UK.

Urging on tides and colds
and in the brooks a brown flood;
a turmoil fills the rivers,
day is angered and offended,
and the heavy, chilly sky
with its hue obscures the moon…

When May comes in its green livery
with ordination for the fresh leaves
then green grows along the threads
of the bush for him who owns it.
Fair is the tree and lively,
from whose branches grow thick gold;
God gave, o faultless structure,
a shower of gold to its stalks.
Let my girl rejoice that a green grove
makes a paradise for a poet.
We love the loveliest flowers,
but these boughs are summer’s frost.

Ac annog llanw ac annwyd
ac mewn naint llifeiriaint llwyd
a llawn son mewn afonydd
a llidiaw a digiaw dydd
ac wybren drymled ledoer
a’i lliw yn gorchuddiaw’r lloer…

Pan ddel Mai a’i lifrai las
ar irddail i roi’r urddas
aur a dyf ar edafedd
ar y llwyn er mwyn a’i medd.
Teg yw’r pren a gwyrennig
y tyf yr aur tew o’r frig.
Duw a roes, difai yw’r ail,
aur gawod ar y gwiail.
Bid llawen gwen bod llwyn gwydd
o baradwys i brydydd.
Blodau gorau a garwn;
barrug haf ydyw’r brig hwn.

(from Dafydd ap Gwilym a’i Gyfoeswyr, by T. Roberts with Sir Ifor Williams, Bangor, 1914, p 91 and 79. English translation by Gwyn Williams.)

The bush which is celebrated here is of course the broom (Cytisus scoparius) and I’m happy to say that in my garden there is a shower of gold on its stalks and the air is rich with its honey scent. A paradise for a poet indeed.

Seeing Things - The Vision of the Poet

Van Gogh: A Pair of Shoes 

Seeing things: The vision of the poet

We've seen that the Old Irish word for poet, fili, comes from a root meaning 'seer' and is cognate with Welsh gweled, 'to see'.  But what does the poet see? Nothing less, I’d suggest, than the invisible in the visible - to rephrase the words of the French symbolist artist, Odilon Redon. 

What does this mean? In early societies poetry was entwined with prophecy – a divinely inspired utterance or revelation, often about what is to come. Our English word ‘seer’ refers to a person who sees visions, an inspired person, a prophet. Yet the poet does not necessarily need to see visions or prophesy to be a seer. I think there are several different ways by which the poet sees the invisible and mediates it to the reader or listener through words to make it visible. (Naturally, when I say ‘see’ I don’t mean only seeing with the eyes but include other sense-perceptions, as well as intellectual cognition and intuition – a perception via the unconscious, to use Jung’s definition.)

These are my suggestions for the ways the poet sees what is often invisible to others:

      1. By seeing things differently to the commonly perceived view.

      2. By seeing things that aren’t there, that is, seeing things that aren’t there according to others, or to ‘consensus reality'. 

      3. By seeing into the nature of things – insight.

      4. By seeing things more clearly than others – being a keen observer of objects, people etc.

      5.  By seeing ‘through’ things, beyond mere appearance.

      6. By seeing things that are intangible – abstract ideas, objects and situations as metaphor or symbols

      7. By seeing things before they happen – foretelling, associated with prophecy.

      8. By seeing visions –  these may be supernatural, often accompanied by revelation, in a state of heightened perception or a dream, or a trance. Or they may be arrived at via the imagination.

Of course these categories blur and overlap with each other. For instance, seeing things clearly may involve insight, seeing into the nature of things or seeing through things as when a poet is not fooled by some commercial or political manipulation.

Most, if not all, types of poetry are included in these ways of seeing: humorous poets see things differently, satirical poets see through things, mystical poets see visions or see into the nature of things and so on. But the poet doesn’t have to be a mystic or to have visions to be a poet, although s/he may be, what is required is to perceive beyond the ordinary, beyond the  matter-of-fact, the mundane - the prosaic.

***

Seamus Heaney: how a poet sees things

‘Seeing Things’ (1991) is the inspired title of a volume of poetry by Seamus Heaney. Inside there is a sequence of 3 poems with the collection’s title. In I, Heaney presents us with several types of seeing, from his observation of the people in a boat and his own fear to an out of the body experience of looking down as if from another boat ‘sailing through air’ to see ‘how riskily we fared into the morning/And loved in vain our bare, bowed, numbered heads’. 

In II he gives us a description of a carving, on the stone façade of a cathedral, of Jesus standing in a river and John the Baptist pouring water over his head. ‘…Lines/Hard and thin and sinuous represent/The flowing river. Down between the lines/ Little antic fish are all go. Nothing else/ And yet in that utter visibility/ The stone’s alive with what’s invisible’. Likewise, the poem also is alive with what is invisible.

In III, he conjures up a vision of his father remembering an incident when his father came back from the river after an accident, an incident which prefigured his ‘imminent ghosthood’.

Seamus Heaney often has a unique way of seeing objects. He describes them in three dimensions, not only how they look but their weight, the space they occupy, the way they feel to the people who use them. He explores how people interact with tools, how they express themselves through them. They become a metaphor for the interaction between the material and the intangible, the physical and the emotional or spiritual. I can’t help thinking of him when reading something that Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

We are symbols and inhabit symbols; workman, work and tools, words and things, birth and death, all    are emblems; but we sympathise with the symbols, and, being infatuated with the economical uses of things, we do not know that they are thoughts. The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes, and a tongue, into every dumb and inanimate object. (The Poet)

In the collection ‘Station Island’ (1984) there is a sequence called Shelf Life which has poems about a granite chip, a smoothing iron, old pewter, an iron spike, a stone from Delphi and a snowshoe. Old Smoothing Iron is one of my favourite Heaney poems. In it he enables us to see what he saw: how the compact wedge rode the back of the stove like a tug at anchor, how the woman spat in its iron face and aimed it into the linen like a plane, ‘like the resentment of women’. And finally he shows us something about the paradoxical nature of work, in an almost visceral way, in the mechanics of ironing – to move a certain mass a certain distance and ‘feel exact and equal to it’ is to ‘Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.’

Exercise

Describe a mundane object like an iron or a snowshoe as objectively as you can – its colour, size, weight, use etc. Then look at the object again and allow your imagination to come into play; let the object become a portal to something else.

Or, write a poem about Van Gogh’s Pair of Shoes, the illustration at the head of this post.

A Few Last Small Stones

21st January

Deep winter -
in the shelter of a holly tree
a bush of vibrant pink bells
remember summer

22nd January
    -


23rd January

Through the scribbled branches
of the beech tree
the evening sky turns pewter


24th January

Evening: On the doorstep I leave an offering
              of the day's uneaten cat food

Morning: The white bowl empty
               but for the crisp curled mystery
                of a winter leaf.


25th January

Opening the curtains
a bright round face
beams through the window -
the returning sun


26th January

Curiously
a line of sheep
circles the oak-crested mound -
a living amulet


27th January

The goldfinch rides
the mast of last year's evening primrose
like a sailor scanning for land


28th January

In the far distance
snow-heavy hills blend with the sky
merrily
the windmills spin their blades


29th January

      -

30th January

As of old the church bell rings out -
my first service for 30 years -
inside a boy sings
'Blowing in the Wind'
in Polish
a saxophone played from the pulpit
reverberates along the pews
outside the wind-borne snow
creates the world anew



31st January

On a bed of moss and snowdrops
lies the Bride doll lightly sleeping
come and call her to awaken
celebrate this springtime brightening!

Some more small stones

January 13th
In my dream
the small stones grow
to make a crossing-place

January 14th
Visiting Gill
Kitchen Alchemy
a treeful of sparrows

January 15th
Sentinel blackbird
overseeing the garden
its symphony of food

January 16th
The hills hunch against the mist
we watch it gather
fillling the valley with enchantment

January 17thThe sign in the cafe:
'Have some cake - you deserve it!'
What puzzles me
is how they know?

January 18th
A settled mist blurs the garden
indoors
my day lacks definition

January 19th
Today's small stone
grew larger in my hand -
became a poem
that sang to me
of luminescence

January 20th
Black wellington boot
thick grey sock nestles inside -
resting on it the husk of a butterfly

A Week of Small Stones

January 6th

Bare birch branches
brush the sky
banishing contrails

January 7th


Blue stained-glass sky
framed
by the monkey-puzzle tree

January 8th

Solitary Sunday
companionable
the drip of water from the gutter

January 9th


Looking up -
a sinister plume of cloud
slowly moving east

January 10th


New Year gale -
hurtling past
the garden chairs
I meant to put away

January 11th


Late again -
time slips through my grasp
like a bar of soap

January 12th

The door blows open
sunlight
rolls a golden carpet down the hall