New Welsh Reader Winter 2020: New Welsh Review

By Laura Wainwright and Philip Gross

An anthology of high quality prose and poetry by prizewinning authors from Wales and beyond, on the theme of Wild Unassuming Spaces. Philip Gross contributes two preview poems from his forthcoming collection for Seren, Troeon/Turnings. Thrice Wales Book of the Year winner Robert Minhinnick offers 'Ffynnon Wen', part of a project called Our Squar

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Welsh Review
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913830038

Laura Wainwright

Laura Wainwright is a writer from Newport, Gwent. Her poetry, essays and reviews have been published in a range of magazines, journals and anthologies. She has been shortlisted in the Bridport Prize poetry competition twice, and was awarded a Literature Wales Writer's Bursary in 2020 for her poetry. Her book, New Territories in Modernism: Anglophone Welsh Writing, 1930-1949, was published by University of Wales Press in 2018. wainwrightlauraj.wixsite.com/mysite

Book preview

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Contents

WINTER 2020

IMPRINT

BIRD-SINGING LAND

The Holy Power of Penylan

MARGIAD EVANS AND WILLIAM LENNOX

SIGN UP

CORMORANTS ON THE TAFF

MUTATIONS

SCHOOL

WHITE SHAPES IN SNOW

THE BURNING BRACKEN

FFYNNON WEN

SOWERBY’S BEAKED WHALE

Thank You

WINTER 2020

Unassuming Wild Spaces

From A Fold in the River, Philip Gross (text) and Valerie Coffin Price (artwork), published by Seren.

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New Welsh Reader

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© New Welsh Review Ltd and the authors

ISBN: 9781913830038

ISSN: 09542116

Views expressed in NWR are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either editor or board.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, recorded or otherwise, without the permission of the publisher, the New Welsh Review Ltd.

New Welsh Review Ltd publishes with the financial support of the Books Council of Wales, and is hosted by Aberystwyth University’s Department of English & Creative Writing. New Welsh Review Ltd was established in 1988 by Academi (now Literature Wales) and the Association for Welsh Writing in English. New Welsh Reader is New Welsh Review’s magazine for creative work. We also publish eight e-editions annually of reviews and comment and at least one book annually on the New Welsh Rarebyte imprint, run a writing competition (New Welsh Writing Awards), and improve diversity in the UK publishing industry by hosting student work placements.

Mae croeso ichi ohebu â’r golygydd yn Gymraeg.

Patrons: Belinda Humfrey, Owen Sheers

BIRD-SINGING LAND

LAURA WAINWRIGHT ON THE UNASSUMING WILD SPACES OF WEST NEWPORT, REGAINED DURING LOCKDOWN

PHOTOS: THE AUTHOR

Part I: Height and Tide (Ridgeway, Newport)

Leisure

Up here, cars call and leave

like fed birds, engines chorusing,

waiting for dusk or deal;

for text, touch,

the cloud-cleared twmp, or tongue

to run along a paper edge,

a cupped spark,

the green musk of hills.

Days that have been…

diesel, salt and vinegar

trade winds, licking this ridge,

its contusions of height and tide;

Victorian toilets (selling flat whites now)

and on November 5th, this whole wide sky

a smoky, disobedient display.

So stop and stand or sit a while

(don’t stare too long)

another grateful captive

of this view. Let the M4 crawl.

See the tramping ramblers,

the phantom tracks of sleds. Watch

the city’s dogs mark a parade of benches

with rained-on bouquets.

‘Leisure’ describes Ridgeway in Allt-yr-yn, on the west side of Newport. Although I wrote it sometime in mid 2019, perhaps I was imagining a place ten years from now. Known locally as ‘little Switzerland’, this grassy, tree-lined ridge, a ten-minute walk from my front door, commands one of the best views in Newport. People come from all over the city to where a blowy hill sweeps down to the woods and meadows of Allt-yr-yn Nature Reserve. Beyond the reserve runs the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, which once transported thousands of tonnes of coal and iron to wharves on the Usk river. Parallel to this, the permanently audible M4 motorway – from Ridgeway’s elevated position, mostly obscured by woodland – streams, stalls, inches by. On a clear day, pyramidal Ysgyryd Fawr, on the edge of the Black Mountains, is visible to the north. While towards the north-west , where earthen hills form a gateway to the Gwent valleys, the dwarfed dome of Arthur Machen’s ‘mystic tumulus’,i the Iron-age hill fort of Twmbarlwm or ‘the twmp’, moves in and out of focus with the pollution levels and the weather – ‘that green pap in Gwent’, as WH Davies called it, ‘with its dark nipple in a cloud’.ii

There is something uncannily nurturing and soothing about this view. Amongst its littered human landmarks (clusters of odd-sized buildings, a golf course, a reservoir, a communication mast), are hills, valleys, fields; canopies of ancient ash, beach, birch and oak; a mercurial sky. And, in the south, on the other side of Ridgeway, beyond the roads and rooftops, and the dark fluted chimney of Uskmouth B Power Station: a streak of Severn Estuary in modulating shades of taupe and silver. People of all ages and backgrounds come up here to walk their dogs, fly kites and drones, buy takeaway coffees and paninis, smoke pungent marijuana, make phone calls from their car; or eat fish and chips out of the bag, greasy paper flapping in the wind. Every time I walk up here, I am filled with a physical and existential feeling of perspective. Ridgeway is like a window flung wide on the natural world, within the preoccupied, traffic-filled city; and I hope it will always be preserved and protected. I have observed how many people do come here simply to ‘stand and stare’,iii or sit, often alone, in their cars or on one of the many memorial benches that crown the hill – the weather-beaten seats of ‘days that have been’.iv Perhaps their thoughts, like mine, feel instantly lighter up here. Airborne.

Part II: ‘A flowery, green, bird-singing land’v

(Allt-yr-yn Nature Reserve, Newport)

Of Ants and Lions

When the flying ants emerge,

this meadow will dip

down still to the dank pool,

where the swimmers are, frog-legged,

water tinted like old pennies,

and the wood, its many doors

and lions’ dens,

scrambles uphill.

Today, a crop of clocks

white as bridal wings

fly their seconds in swarms:

a snow for all the bitter-yellow

suns the children pick

and bring to me, squashed,

in muggy palms.

I drop them,

like Ophelia, graciously,

secretly, along the way,

the day humming and heating.

For every flower remembered,

a field, forgotten.

It is June 2020 and Ridgeway is starting to return to how