Being Welsh is Like a River

 

The place to start is at the beginning. For me that was on a mountainside in Eryri, the land of the Mabinogion, one early morning late October. I was born in a tiny shack with two rooms: one up, one down. You couldn’t get there by car so the midwife had to find her way with a torch through the howling wind and hailstones. She was joined by a two other women, a friend of my mother's and a local grandmother who saw lights on and came to investigate. It was there, in this warm company of characters, that I entered the world. 

It’s hard to imagine a beginning more rooted. My ties to Welsh land are literal, visceral. My first breath gulped in the cold, crow-laden air; my placenta buried on Cnicht, the Matterhorn-shaped mountain that protects Croesor valley, my home. My sense of being Welsh, however, has never been straightforward. Neither of my parents are Welsh, for a start. My mother is from former Yugoslavia - she moved to Britain as soon as she started hearing the whispers of war. My father is from Bristol and settled in Meirionnydd when he found a gardening job in Plas Penrhyn, former home of Bertrand Russell, near the surreal Italianate village of Portmeirion.

I’ve often wondered what it was like for my mother, who, after divorcing my father, was left alone with me as a baby in this remote slate-mining village, so far from her own roots. What she remembers most is the kindness she received. Everyone welcomed her as a new member of the community and she soon learnt the benefits of living in a tight social pocket, with all its familiarity and security. On my first birthday, for example, she invited the whole village. Photos show everyone piled into the sparse living room, crowded around a cake, and me, hovering above it in my mother’s arms. Like my birth, what this shows is an involvement, the experience of being part of other people’s milestones. No pomp or ceremony, just being there, witnessing, knowing the ins and outs. 

I started learning Welsh from an early age when I was looked after by our neighbours. One of my first phrases was ‘Sia bia!’ which I used to proudly point at objects and claim my dominion. I spoke Welsh in nursery, then school, so it was never something I questioned, it was just something I did and always had done. Because we didn’t speak it at home, though, my commitment started to waver. The heavy, definite sounds made strange shapes with my tongue - it felt awkward. Borrowed. Not mine. In typical rebellious fashion, I began discarding the language, avoiding it wherever possible, and focusing instead on my Englishness, which felt more international and full of promise. 

It was only after travelling to the Peruvian Sacred Valley in my twenties, where many of the locals still speak the indigenous language Quechua, that it struck me how lucky I was to speak a similarly ancient, precious and endangered language. When I came home, I vowed to re-learn Welsh, working in a bar in Blaenau Ffestiniog, one of the most Welsh-speaking towns in the country. I enjoyed shocking people who presumed I wasn’t local due to my English accent, asking, ‘Tisho peint?’ As well as the language, one thing I valued moving back to Wales was the wildness. I don’t just mean the landscape, I mean the people. Not a misty-eyed mysticism, but a guttural, mad, romantic-with-a-capital-R sort of wildness. So many poets, musicians, teachers, philosophers - professional and not. So many hard drinkers and howl-at-the-mooners. We certainly know how to party and it is wholesome, it is magic (and not just because we go picking in the hills every autumn). 

I remember reading once about the psychology behind celebrity. Apparently, what drives people to be famous is an evolutionary need to be recognised. In ancient times, when communities were smaller, to be recognised would be a given - an intrinsic part of life. Since many of us have sprawled out into cities, moving from one place to the next, it’s more common to be anonymous, or at least have that option. I used to crave being that mysterious stranger who appears and disappears, who has no past or future, coasting on an eternal present. Sooner or later, though, we desire context. We wish to wrap its downy warmth around us, sink our toes into its inviting earth. By context I mean finding yourself in the pub, and sitting to your right is the partner of a woman who babysat you, and to your left, a teenager who you remember being born. It’s people knowing your name without an introduction. Like a homing pigeon, I, like so many of my peers, returned. 

As an adult with experience of living in different countries, settling back home has been a process of reclaiming. From the ungrounded hedonism of travel and a capricious sense of identity, I have come full circle, landing back in a community which has now shifted and grown to include my schoolmates and their children: a generational resurgence. It has taken me years to accept my place here. So much of my youth I felt a split in my heritage. I wasn’t as Welsh as my school friends, whose Nain and Taid we’d go and visit off the school bus, who’d feed us cheese and jam sandwiches with our panads. I wasn’t English like my cousins who lived in cities, and I certainly wasn’t Serbian like my Baba Rosa, who came from a different world entirely, whose everyday life felt so painfully foreign. 

I may not have the claim of ancestors here, spanning back for centuries. I may not have a Welsh name, or even an accent. What I do have, though, is my beginnings, memories of the landscape stitched into the very core of me: the familiarity of bare tree on craig, wool torn on barbed wire, fresh tinkle of stream freshly thawed from snow. I have the physical fact of playing in my neighbour’s farm, exploring the labyrinthine sheep pens. I have the experience of attending Croesor primary school, now closed, that was set up for miners’ children and housed no more than thirty pupils at a time. I have the secret of smoking my first cigarette in an abandoned barn where it was rumoured a woman had hung herself due to a scandalous affair. I have the pain of facing teenage trials, shameful mistakes aired out in public.

Now I understand more and more that Welsh identity is of an ungraspable nature. It is inseparable from place, and therefore each county, town and hamlet has its own version of Welshness. I know my community’s flavour and I recognise it in myself: a radical focus on eachother’s needs, a fiery fuck-you to cookie-cutter conformism, an unpretentious understanding of the seasons and an unwavering respect towards the land. It is the stirring pride when you see the Welsh flag, a giddiness in knowing how slight, how impossibly tucked-in we are geographically, and yet how deep our myths are planted, how old the words we still utter. I feel part of something worthy, now especially, with the ever-more pressing need for ground-level action, and the increasing focus on smaller, truer entities - such as the village shop, such as the granular rallying for social change. 

Speaking about national identity can border on the nostalgic and the quaint - especially, I feel, with Wales. So often we are regarded as a tourist attraction, a time capsule that can be accessed for a fee. Welsh cakes and daffodils and choirs, etc. What cannot be sold in a gift shop is the tangible connection between people, story, and place. It’s not always pretty, it’s rarely simple. In my case, an identity wasn’t handed over, but rather, I had to mould it myself. The clay was there already but it was up to me to shape it into something that fits and captures all of me - my foreignness included. Perhaps what I have experienced is a journey all of us take - a journey back home. Let’s not discard our complexities along the way - through contradiction healthy tension arises, and then, movement. Change.  

Being Welsh is like a river - running from the same source yet branching into a thousand streams. Fluid, elemental, it takes many forms, joining the estuaries of something bigger, the wider world, the sea. 

Coming Home

I have been drawn to the city since I was a child. The glamour, the serendipity, the everyday unknown. From as young as three, family friends would tell me, ‘You’ll live in a city one day.’ People saw me being precious about my shiny red boots and my love of performing and thought instantly: city girl. 

How funny, then, that I am as country as it gets. Born literally on a mountainside in a small village in Snowdonia, the midwife had to walk up a track with a torch to welcome me into being. I grew up there, cradled by the valley,  going to the primary school that housed thirty kids at most. I played in the rivers and hills, sneaked cigarettes in the barns, watched sunsets and snowstorms from our centuries-old home. Idyllic? Not to me. Friends from towns or cities would come to stay and beg to go up mountains. I couldn’t think of anything worse. Why was walking seen as fun? Walking was a chore, something I had to do sometimes after school. It was boring. My idea of fun was watching TV indoors or going to a cafe or a shopping centre. And views? What was the big deal? The scenery was unbearably static to me: the same wall, the same tree, only the seasons offering any kind of variation. I wanted streetlights, strangers, the white noise of traffic. 

No surprise that I moved to the city as soon as I could. From the claustrophobic fishbowl that was my teenage years came the vast expanse of foreign streets and 24-hour possibility. My studies took me to Cardiff, Norwich, London. My travels; all around Europe and South America. Home to me became a postcard. A warm, romantic orange glow that I could dip into now and then. It was a sanctuary from the hedonism of my twenties.

The last city I lived in was Granada, Spain. I moved there on a whim - or a calling - and found myself enchanted by the Moorish architecture, the history of gypsies in caves, the network of travelers. I stayed there for two years and thought I could not be happier. 

We all experience breaking points, most likely more than once in our lives. My big one came in the form of chronic fatigue that creeped over me slowly - the cloudy head of a virus overstaying its welcome. After losing the ability to work or socialise I was forced to move back home. There I was: twenty-six, single, jobless, utterly exhausted and cut off from the world. My identity as a jetsetting adventurer was shattered. The following two years were the most challenging and humbling of my life, consisting mainly of sitting, lying down, reading, and wondering if I would ever feel normal again. 

Then came Covid, and with it, even more restrictions. When my health improved, I found a house in the local area, accepting that I would be staying here for the foreseeable future. My travel plans were on hold. 

I’m fortunate enough to look back at that period of lockdowns and be largely grateful. It forced me to be patient. I had always found comfort in the escape plan of travel, knowing if things got too grey and complicated, I could always go to a new country. If relationships didn’t work out, I could always meet new people. The world, I felt, had an endless supply of second chances. The downside, however, is that you’re always expanding upwards and outwards, there is a grabbing, moreish mentality. Down below, foundationally, your roots are stunted. You miss out on the subtle, committed quality of staying in one place.

Now, suddenly, I was able to afford my own house. The subsidised rent on the rural estate meant I could make a home on my own terms, working for myself as an English teacher. I was surrounded by family, old friends and new. Life was just as intricate as living in the city, if not more so. The difference was the focus. 

Imagine a wide-angle lens. This is what you use in a city. You get the impression of a place by taking in its vastness: the buildings, so tall you barely notice their roofs; crowds of people blurring into one; shop signs, indecipherable as hieroglyphs. In a small community the lens is telescopic. You zoom in on the people around you, dynamics shifting with the weather, backstories constant in their surprise. 

I’ve learned that living in a small community tests your resilience. People imagine rural life as cosy, sheltered, easy. The truth is, you are tested. Think about your social life in the city. Chances are you will spend the majority of your time with people of a similar age and similar interest. It’s easy to let relationships fizzle out when there are hundreds of other people who promise to be better suited. But in a small village, you are stuck with who’s there, and that means patience, that means effort. In these politically divided times, it’s tempting to shut off anyone who disagrees with you, but you can afford no such luxury here. Even if it’s just exchanging small talk at the village shop, those interactions count, each one a subtle thread stitching up our differences. 

This valley is now in a particularly fertile period. Many young people like myself have moved back to the area, bringing with them partners and friends. Many are having children, solidifying the community even further. This fresh energy has sparked new ideas and projects, from social spaces to women’s circles, to art classes and exhibitions. Who knew so much vision could be concentrated in this tiny patch of land? When you are granted space in the form of mountains and freedom in the form of low rent, you are more inclined to contribute to society in your own unique way. You have the headspace to do so. That to me is utopia: everyone using their natural, joy-giving talents to enrich the lives of others. 

Though I did not necessarily choose this life, I can now recognise the privilege of what I have been given. Those with community are the true billionaires - the ones with fresh air and palpable connections. Living in different places has given me the grit and perspective I needed to dive, ready now, into this earth, these mossy ancient forests, ice-clear rivers, sheep-trodden paths, and recognise the beauty in the known, the depth of getting-to-know-more. The curiosity that lies in the familiar.

Poems, Summer 2021

On Grass

Tall, swampy routes

Into the night, and the after, 

Pleasant dawns

In the bones, in the troughs, 

Platitudes wrung out

Dripping on to grass, 

On the concrete, 

On to grass

*

The golden light

The early chill

Bites me

Into this heavy space

Of bones resting, pouring gaze, 

The soft ache

Of knowing 

On this grass: awake

 

_____________________________

A Serbian Woman

She is pure and authentic

In her artifice

Performative

As a church gathering 

She shaves her legs

Dyes any greys

Fills lips and breasts

To the painful side of bursting 

She must purr and gesture

At the table outside

With her cigarette and Nescafe

Filtering through afternoons 

She must hold herself

As an offering 

Of strength

She must work hard

For pennies

As nurse, midwife, 

Vase

She must cook and

Pickle in the summer

Store jars,

Dip bread in the juice

Leftover from sliced tomato 

She must drive through

Busy polluted streets

And care for her mother

Her father

Her relatives who emigrated

She must cry

When it is sad, when it is time, 

And rejoice

Always

In the milestones of others 

She must accept men’s attention 

Without encouraging it 

She must be a loyal friend 

And celebrate the appropriate Saint’s Days

She is scorched diamond

Woeful warrior

Ground-down mistress

Deep-set mound

_____________________________

Remember we are always beginning

Peaceful waiting 

Humble certainty

Ticking stillness

In all that has not yet unspooled

Benevolent forces

Draw strings and shapes

In heavenly sequences

And we are yet to know 

Their intricate patterns

And how they fit

On to our skin 

And nestle

In to our lives

Joy brings

A lightness of mist

In the morning 

Purging the night’s dreams

Of torture and clenched teeth

Some tension always

Made concrete on the pillow

A way with words

Stirs the right ones up 

In a bath of petals

And vine leaves 

In the fragrant mulch

Of all that has been 

We splash against the surface

Of our new beginnings

Light a candle

For those not present 

Let the tiny flame

Conjure life

_____________________________

Charm

My charm is that I’m genuine

My charm is that

My tongue is loose and free

Sometimes I act up 

Play the role

Of the disagreer

I enjoy arguing

It adds a fire

I like rubbing up against 

Hard surfaces

I like to spark 

To smell smoke

To let things die in ember

_____________________________

To smell a rose

Taut as the string 

Of a violin 

Skirting the edge:

Insect feet

Dew

Hexagonal cells

With tightrope precision

The scent rings out 

An orchestra

Of powder blossom eggshell apple 

An incantation,

Its rapture

Wraps us

In voluptuous 

Presence

_____________________________

It is not too late, it is never too late

Oh, humility

When you embody 

All that galls you 

Like the blackest tar 

Left bled in the ground

Sodden down and heavy 

Heavy with it 

Repelled by beauty:

Oh, turn me into a villain already

Easier that 

Than to change

Poems, Spring 2021

Icing on the Cake

Nuzzle me in bed

Feed me lavender from your palms

As you ponder

My sugary spirit

I’ll tell you what is feminine:

Plump,

Wide-open, 

Rawness

Lingering 

Ruthlessness

Quivering

Jaws

It is my birthday

So you bring me cake

On a dish, 

Glazed

Mother-of-pearl forgive me

For I have eaten twice my weight

And still 

I drizzle greed

On the sheets

- Taut as they are

Pulled-over and smooth 

You grind me down

And all that’s left 

Is gloopy pink

And shards coagulated 

Strung along 

De-boned,

I sliver off the palate 

Rescue me rescue me 

I am dainty I am dainty 

I am varnish, flaking, 

Windows, breaking, 

I am sheen I am gloss

I am wet chin I am moss 

I am snake gone to hide

I am fear I am tide

I am wading gull

Cracking skull 

Let me out, let me eat, 

Forever I beg at the foothills 

I dream of being a strong woman 

All those conversations

All that headspace 

Others would call me strong

They know not the weakness and the poison 

There is so much yet to happen 

I have weathered out storms 

Roaring great storms 

I am punctured and gleaming still 

_____________________________

Let's call it anxious

Nervous nervous so nervous everything is perfect everything is close to just right we fly across continents though none of us are content I harbour raging jealousy and feelings I’m ashamed of I feel alone and corrupted by my bitterness I do not feel that these are noble feelings I do not feel justified or right or true I feel faulty fallible and petty I feel faulty I have not acknowledged my true power my heart beats fast I am confused I see beauty everywhere it is just emotion it is just emotion when do I push myself when do I say no I don’t want to do this when do I stop when do I say when do I stop when do I say I don’t want to do this I don’t want to do this when do I stop when do I draw boundaries when do I when do I when do I lift them when do I let go when do I when do I in the spare room we lived there a long time in the spare room we lived there a long time yes I have cut I have severed I never did anything wrong yes I am frantic I am nervous I do not know how to communicate my feelings -

I feel stuck I feel battered I feel chained I feel dramatic I feel solid I feel liquid I feel tamed deranged conflicted I feel murder I feel bone I feel axle I feel stone I feel cowardly I feel sick I feel bled onto candlewick I feel treacherous I feel bold I feel every shade of mould I feel juicy I feel free I feel hung up on the tree I feel worthless I feel gnarled I feel bark I feel charred I feel flickered I feel clumsy I feel sexy I feel mumsy I feel all I feel none I feel forefinger on thumb I feel wisened I feel hag I feel every dream I’ve had I feel tiny I feel small I feel fates in crystal ball I feel proud I feel lean I feel all this in between I feel peppered I feel jewelled I feel stalked I feel ruled 

- by forces that are not a part of me and there is no way there is no way it is hard it is hard to face these and admit that they are me it all comes from me oh thank you thank you for the chafing

_____________________________

What happens outside of me?

Much of the same 

Much of not much

The thread that keeps it all together

Tangled in stasis

Trapped by own tail

In own mouth

_____________________________

Serpent (and round and round)

Here I am snake I am rising I am scaled I am writhing I am changing I am shedding I am emerging and embedding I can belittle I can belie I can cry and cry and cry I can howl and moan and shiver I can accept I can deliver I can wail and quiver and shout I am eel I am trout I am walrus I am faun I am sprinkle I am yawn I am autumn apple crisp I am thick hide I am mist I am rain on modest bud I am fat cow chewing cud I am saxophone I am priest I am stinking goatherd in Greece I am swallow I am nest I am bitter pulpy zest I am beak I am shoe I am everything and you and all of this all of this exists in a mad haven in the mind of a madman in the mad space in mad existence in the flow and the slurry and the blizzard and the flurry I do what I do and I love what I do I shall not falter I shall not break (I will break oh a thousand times I will break but let that breaking be marvellous let it be a shattering a tinkle a powder a song) oh yes the wonderful delightful shivering joy of being the serpent being the writhing force of nature being stuffed with pain and laughter being unequivocally imperfect being disgusting ugly blemished oh yes I dance and celebrate these thoughts like the ghosts that they are we make a party of it and strip off by the fire we dip into frozen water anew we gleam the forest floor sticking to our bare soles woodsmoke tangled in hair flask of hot chocolate and whisky fresh olive bread and the crackle between us the circle of stone 

*

I am not one I am seven let me while away the hours let me sever my own arm let me live creative let me dawdle and dawdle with glee let me taste let me see I am not one I am god I am goddess I am seed a nut a fruit a tangle a weave a cool breeze a wallowing elephant a mammoth a shark I am day after dark after day after dusk I am a husk I am the juicy flesh and entrails I am a slug I am a battered hen a grub I am a surefire way to success a bottleneck a buzzing tattered bumblebee searching for pollen I am a rune a forgotten song I am a finger puppet I am a doll I am a crucifix restored no more no more no take no more I am the words of my suffering I am crying in stillness I am a roar a shriek a bubble a tweak I am messy and bold and twenty eight years old I am a house laid in bricks I am an old bundle of sticks I am a hornets nest I am Sunday’s best I am a cackle and moan I am a latent gilded throne and woah woah woah what do you have to show - with Spring comes the new day we stand and straddle the new day here we are the new day the new day forcing in forcing a seat at the table undone undone bleeding gums bleeding hearts retribution finger mouth let everything out I want to heal I want to heal put the work in put the work in heal the pain heal the deep pain first accept it first accept its persistence it is deep oh yes it is deep - always I want rid of discomfort always I want to escape from my painful heart oh yes oh yes oh yes - forgotten bruised pathetic used - used to it all - used to the disappointment - no balm or ointment - intricate woven sticky webs I am not one I am seven 

_____________________________

Sustained

Something beyond us 

Has sustained 

Beyond all the upset

The baggage and the doubt

Lies a certainty 

Akin to a forest floor

With soft plants underfoot

River nearby

Roots emerging as trunks

All held up 

By the same force

That spits out 

Flower from seed

That bursts through 

With expansion

With loving

Surrender