In the summer issue of last year, Poetry, the magazine founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912, published a poem, ‘Scholl’s Ferry Rd.’ by Michael Dickman. It is not a very long poem, but it spreads over thirty pages, including four pages at the end with only one line apiece. Blank space is used imaginatively here to suggest the increasingly blank spaces in an old lady’s life as she succumbs to dementia.

My uncle, Don Barnie, volunteered in the First World War and joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Deployed to Gallipoli, he had with him a cheap pocket diary for 1916 in which he made sporadic notes: ‘10 yds from the Turks trench. Bomb dodging.’

I’m a fair-weather walker, so I don’t walk the cliffs between Clarach and Borth in winter. Last summer I didn’t manage it at all because of virus restrictions. The coastal path is very narrow with little room to pass walkers coming in the opposite direction, and I have to get a bus back from Borth to Comins Coch where I live, both of which would have breached lockdown rules. This summer I’m hoping it may be different, but who knows…