Golau heb Ffiniau 2020/ Words for Winter 2020
Ar gyfer gaeaf 2020, mae Siop Lyfrau Penrallt wedi gwahodd rhai o’n hoff awduron a beirdd i anfon neges, dewis darn o un o’u cyfrolau neu ysgrifennu cerdd fel anrheg fach i’n cymuned / For winter 2020 Pen'rallt Gallery Bookshop invited some of our best-loved authors and poets to send a message, choose an extract from one of their books, or write a poem, just as a small gift to our community.
Order any of Gillian Clarke’s titles here (we have most in stock) including those published by Carcanet. Designed with beautiful covers, many featuring the work of artists Mary Lloyd Jones and Shani Rhys-James:
Here is simply Menna’s ‘quick randomish verbatim on the Welsh’ a poem that she wrote after a class at a primary school were told to hum Happy Birthday on the morning of one girl’s birthday [to keep all the class safe during the Covid-19 pandemic]
Three of Menna’s volumes of poetry can also be enjoyed by non-Welsh readers; each have facing translations into English by other prominent Welsh poets, including Gillian Clarke and Elin ap Hywel.
H’m – Humming
And h’mmm from meeting lips,
sweet as the h’m that hums
the Sumerians’ hymn to creation,
unmarked by the measure of Christ.
Today, a child hears h’mm
as the ‘m’ melds a balm of notes,
and mouths muffle words or air.
The boom voices still
as Suo Gân soothes and
hummingbirds sing their first fruit
from nectar. H’mmm, H’mmm.
Humming is an instinct for harmony.
From a murmur, melody
defies the crashing breeze. H’mmm.
On a wing and a prayer,
twenty twenty, our year.
For everyone who has read Alis’s first two novels in the Teifi Valley Coroner Series, book three, Those Who Know, published at the end of 2020, is a must. Book two, ‘In Two Minds’, was short-listed for the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Award. (The series began with ‘None So Blind’, so popular that the publisher, Dome Press, is out of stock, we still have some stock here, but we’re hoping for a reprint!).
thank you to writers who help to express hopes and fears, conditions of human wonder and struggle, through their words / hefyd yn fodd i ddiolch i awduron sy’n helpu i fynegi gobeithion ac ofnau a phob math o ryfeddod a brwydr ddynol drwy eu geiriau.