Last night’s event at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea was a wonderful fusion of music, poetry and prose readings. Before going, I’d been intrigued by how the evening might work. Reading the promotional blurb, it sounded interesting, although with only one term of Welsh classes to my name, I was worried about the amount of Welsh language readings there would be. I needn’t have worried on that score, as there were only a couple of songs in Welsh (and I have no problem listening to Welsh being sung) and all the readings were in English. Not that I have a problem with things being in Welsh, I hasten to add. It’s just that it frustrates me greatly that I haven’t taken the time and effort to learn it and events like this remind me of my shortcomings – or have the potential to do so, at any rate.
What I loved about last night’s event is how Fflur Dafydd and Owen Sheers had worked together to create a kind of dialogue between their respective works, so Fflur sang a song, which answered a letter Owen had read from his book Resistance and so on. It adds a new dimension to how you view works of art when you can see them take on a life of their own in this way. Fascinating stuff.
And why was I drowning, not waving? I simply didn’t have time to wave when I left the Centre. It was raining so heavily and the puddles were widening so fast all around us that we were in danger of becoming submerged, rather than simply being by the Waterfront. Sadly not in possession of a Bond car or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, we just about managed to clear Swansea before the waters covered her entirely.
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