Wednesday 25 February 2015

HAIKUS






THE SWORD

(GLAN Y CLEDDAU)

 

Sprites and faeries play

on the banks of the Cleddau

Roots rock, quartz quiver

 

                                                  JTD, 2015

HAIKUS






ST.NONS

 

Green waters surge high

Thunder-lightning blitz, earth splits

A Welsh saint is born

 

                                                                              JTD, 2015

HAIKUS





ECO-SOUL

(CYFFRO)

Lichen wrap round limbs

dancing to sacred rhythms

freeing green spirit

 

                                                                    JTD, rev 2015

Monday 23 February 2015

HAIKU WORKSHOP SATURDAY 7 MARCH 2-3PM, TOWER GALLERY,ORIEL Y PARC,ST DAVID'S


 

 

TIR/LAND

HAIKU WORKSHOP SAT 7 MARCH 2-3 PM.

Tower Gallery. Oriel y Parc, St Davids,Pembs

 

Haiku is a poetic form and type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku combines form, content and language in a meaningful yet compact way. Haiku poets often write about nature, feelings and experiences. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines, usually containing 17 syllables; five syllables on the first and third lines and seven on the middle line.

Would you like to respond creatively to Rhys Daniel’s art work by writing your own haiku? Places are limited to 12 so prior booking is essential. The best haikus will be displayed during the exhibition.

For further information contact Janet and Rhys at: janetdaniel125@hotmail.com

Text or telephone: 0750 5024 117.

TIR/LAND; A CELEBRATION OF PEMBROKESHIRE-5 MARCH -MAY 30 2015

Rhys and I are preparing for our joint exhibition at the Tower Gallery at Oriel y Parc in St.David's, Pembrokeshire. Below is the press release we are sending out. I'll be running a Haiku workshop on Saturday 7th of March at 2pm to encourage participants to write their own haikus inspired by Rhys' art work. See a separate entry.


TIR/LAND: A CELEBRATION OF PEMBROKESHIRE

EXHIBITION OF ARTWORK BY I.R.DANIEL & POETRY BY J.DANIEL

Arddangosfa o waith celf gan I.R. Daniel

a barddoniaeth gan J. Daniel

5 March / Mawrth – 30 May / Mai 2015

at Tower Gallery, Oriel y Parc, St. Davids, Pembs.

 

HAIKU Workshop Sat 7th March 2pm

Gweithdy HAIKU Sadwrn 7th Mawrth 2pm

 In ‘TIR/LAND: a celebration of Pembrokeshire’, Rhys and Janet Daniel have worked closely to produce art work and poetry inspired by the land and issues they feel passionate about.

Rhys studied art in Cardiff and Swansea. He has a successful track record as a visual artist and has exhibited in Britain and abroad. He uses mixed media. His work is rooted in ancient Celtic landscape and the natural world. Previous exhibitions have explored his connection with the Welsh landscape; connections between the sacred stones of Wales and Shetland, where he lived for a year; the world of dreams and the unconscious, and the impact of climate change on our environment. Rhys is also an experienced art teacher with over 40 years work in schools and diverse groups in the community.

Janet has written poetry, short stories, travel, memoir, plays and a book about the year spent working in the Shetland Isles.

Janet and Rhys met a long time ago on a photography course in Barry. They have spent the last 35 years summering in a tiny caravan travelling the breadth and depths of Pembrokeshire.

 
janetdaniel125@hotmail.com;  ieuanrhysdaniel.tumblr.com
Tel: 0750 502 4117

Thursday 12 February 2015

ATTACHMENT PANE



 

 
I watch you from the night garden,

trapped in a tiny pane of low-energy twilight,

head in school work, glasses slick on moist nose

-no longer seven but twenty seven-

soon to step into a larger pane

with others waiting for you.

I’ve had this separating moment so many times

I feel resigned

until

the light is a pin hole of indifference.

In panic, I fly back,

the light is there but you have vanished.

 

The light is there but you have vanished.

In panic, I fly back

until

the light is a pin hole of indifference.

I feel resigned.

I’ve had this separating moment so many times,

with others waiting for you.

Soon to step into a larger pane

-no longer seven but twenty seven-

head in school work, glasses slick on moist nose.

In a tiny pane of low-energy twilight

I watch you from the night garden.

Wednesday 11 February 2015

THE SHACK


 

It is February 2nd, the feast of Candlemas, Imbolc and St Brigid’s day. We are sitting in the shack that my sister has built for her journeying into the other world; the world of animal spirits, dreams, astrological and shaman practice, a world I know little of. From the outside the shack looks like a garden shed, but inside it is a Tardis, full of wondrous things; amethyst and rose crystal, quartz pebbles, drift wood and mermaid purses, charts of the heavens and the moon cycles. We sit on her mauve sofa and look out at the dying of the light. Her Border Terrier, Tali, named after the whisky, not the abbey, sits on guard at the paned glass, her nose lifted ready to defend us against urban foxes. She doesn’t know the door is locked and we are all about to make a journey.

         Imbolc is a Celtic festival, celebrating the return of the light after winter. The angel who embraces the earth during its hibernation, stretches and unfolds her luminous wings. She welcomes the sun, the light, warm and golden. Brigid, a favourite Irish saint has also been worshipped as a goddess, the maiden aspect of the triple goddess; maid/virgin, mother and crone.  Brigid is the Keeper of the Sacred Fire and Sacred Waters. She is also associated with learning, poetry, prophesy, healing, metal working, and friend to animals, birds and people. She is often pictured with a white cow and has an association with milk. The word Imbolc means milk or ewe’s milk, which was thought to come in at this time. Brigid was said to be the wet-nurse or mid wife of Christ, and Imbolc is often thought of as mid-wifing the year.

         We sit in silence for some time in the diminishing light, icy blue, darkening, and we gaze out at the skeletons of sycamore and cherry, their limbs and fingers splayed in frozen animation. Sissy bends over to ignite the tea light that sits in a hanging globe of stained glass.  Cobalt, milk-white with a stain of blood red glow in the shack like an egg nurturing its young. It was what I was doing three and a half decades ago at this time of Imbolc.

           I was twenty weeks pregnant when doctors discovered I had contracted a virus similar to German measles. The impact on our unborn son would have been catastrophic; I was working in a long stay mental handicap hospital at the time and had seen the effect; one teenager, deaf, blind, without speech and with profound learning disabilities, sat on the floor of the ward, rocking, banging her head, for ever rocking, and poking her fingers in her eyes to get some kind of stimulation, to find her own light. We didn’t want that for our son or for ourselves. I’d seen the depths of love and pain that parents gave and suffered at the hands of this virus. But, having been brought up as a catholic I was torn. Although I was no longer a believer, I did believe in the sanctity of life. To terminate a pregnancy at this stage was to end a life; to kill, to murder.  But a life sentence for our son and ourselves was the alternative. So we chose murder.

           Sissy speaks and tells me that Candlemas is also the feast of purification. Perhaps this is the chance I have to cleanse myself of my sin, to ask the spirits of the universe for redemption.  Another life is now emerging in our family; my daughter is pregnant with her first to-be-born. The tea light blinks and I see the glass globe like my daughter’s tummy growing in its milkiness, nurturing the new life within her. I think about my new role as I move from mother into grandmother, to crone. Sissy speaks about the joy of becoming a great aunt. We both look deeply at the light, think about the miracle of new life and hope that our daughter will have a rewarding and happy pregnancy. We wish for a healthy baby girl to carry on the maternal line-the line of the triple goddess.

Tuesday 10 February 2015

SELMA

'Selma is a 2014 American historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb and DuVernay. It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel, Hosea Williams, and Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference  (SCLC) and John Lewis of  the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) The film stars British actors David Oyelowo as King, Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and American rapper and actor Common as Bevel.' (Wikipedia)
    To those who were born post-equal opportunities legislation, it may seem anachronistic that black people in the United States despite having the right to vote were obstructed from doing so by State bureaucracy in the south as late as the 1960s. This film gives us real insight into the beliefs and courage of not only black people who marched peacefully against the state storm-troopers of Alabama, but also the white people who joined them, and who were attacked and in one instance in the film killed for their belief in the right of all people, despite colour or creed, to place their vote and by doing so, elect their own politicians to represent their best interests. 
     The part of Martin Luther King, is played with sincerity and veracity by David Oyelowo. We see the tensions and stress that leadership demands of him and its effect on his family. However, I wanted more variety in his tone and at times the anguished Christ-like scenes could have done with more editing. Apparently, in one particular area the film falls down on accuracy; that is King's relationship with Lyndon Johnson., who is portrayed as an obstacle to progress. The writer says she's a story teller and not a custodian of history, but surely it is unfair to the legacy of both men to falsify the relationship in the guise of a good story?
   Thoroughly recommended. Selma is on general release now.