Writer, Margot Farrington, on a UK tour, including London’s famed ‘Troubadour’, is coming to Porthcawl.

She will meet local writers at the latest event at Sustainable Wales’s ‘Green Room’ in a performance at 8pm on Friday, May 24, at 5, James St., Porthcawl.

Reading with her will be locally-based Kristian Evans, Wanda Koseda, Brian Roper.

For Sustainable Wales, a spokesperson said: “The arts are a vital part of sustainability and wellbeing, and our recent events have been wonderful social occasions”.

The ‘Green Room’ is developing a reputation for innovative artistic events, and we see it as an exciting new venue for all kinds of performances, including debates, music, cookery and fashion nights such as ‘frock swaps’.

Entry £3. Everyone welcome

More background on the Splashup blog

Here’s the line up of events

Kris Evans, a poet and artist from Kenfig, will lead a debate on Alchemy at the Green Room (4-5 James Street [above SUSSED], on Friday May 3rd, at 8pm). He is currently writing a book length sequence of poems on alchemy related themes, “A Nomad’s Garden.”

Kris’ words:

Alchemy: The Path Not Taken

Many of us think of the alchemists as primitive scientists, or even charlatans, vainly attempting in their ramshackle labs to transmute lead into gold, or simply empty the pockets of credulous patrons. While this was certainly true for some, it is not the whole picture. At its peak in the 17thC alchemy was the practical application of the principles of the legendary Hermetic philosophy, believed at the time to be the key to the secrets of ancient Egypt. Applying themselves to the processes of “The Great Work,” the alchemists attempted to transform the “lead” of routine consciousness, into the “gold” of an illuminated consciousness capable of perceiving and aligning itself with the living presence of the divine in the world. As William Blake put it in his now famous phrase “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

This “Great Work” has had a profound impact, especially in the arts, influencing Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, and Newton at its height, and closer to our own times, W.B. Yeats, Pablo Picasso, the Surrealists, and Ted Hughes, to name just a few. But alchemy is now largely forgotten, replaced by the new rationalist Science more familiar to us today: objective, realist, materialist and of more immediate use to society.

In the talk we’ll look at some of the claims and processes of alchemy, and also the causes - and the consequences - of its ultimate rejection, and ask what insight it might offer us in this time of global turmoil. After all, we have created a world where pollution is profitable, mass extinctions of species are seemingly unavoidable, ancient rainforests are destroyed to grow food for beef cattle and billions are spent on resource wars by rich countries awash in apathy while millions go hungry. Something has gone badly wrong. We stand at the brink of the precipice. Did we take the wrong path?

Two performances are to be given by Robert Minhinnick and Tracy Evans, with live music by Peter Morgan.

‘An Opera in Baghdad’ is a long poem, published in Minhinnick’s recent ‘New Selected Poems’ (Carcanet). It concerns a visit he made to Iraq in 1997, between the first and second Gulf Wars.

“This ‘opera’ is a lively and very musical dramatic poem”, says Robert Minhinnick. “It commemorates some of the extraordinary people I met on the visit.

“Entering and leaving Iraq meant arduous journeys across implacable desert. The experience has had a major effect on my writing, especially the visit to a deserted Babylon”.

“I was helping make a film about uranium, and hope scenes might be screened during the performances.”

Details:

Friday, April 5, 2013, 8pm.

Robert Minhinnick & Tracy Evans perform “An Opera in Baghdad” at the Green Room, Sustainable Wales, 5, James St., Porthcawl, CF36 3BG. £3. Open mic follows. Details: 01656 783962 robertm@phonecoop.coop

Thursday, April 11, 2013, 7.30pm.

Robert Minhinnick & Tracy Evans perform “An Opera in Baghdad”, Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea SA1 1RR Details 01792 463980.