For Press
Download the Press Release (Word DOCX) PDF Version
Welsh charity “Sustainable Wales” is adding its name to the long campaign to protect the Gwent Levels.
It is organizing a public event at ‘Le Pub’, 1, Bridge Street, Newport NP20 4UT. This is a free event to the public. It will feature writers from Newport and the surrounding area, plus representatives from the RSPB.
Sustainable Wales believes its support for the Gwent Levels campaign is more necessary than ever, with the seeming backing for the proposed ‘M4 extension’ from new Welsh transport minister, Ken Skates.
Co-founder of Sustainable Wales, Robert Minhinnick said today:
“There has always existed an instinctive desire to protect this unique area. But we note the recent comments by Mike Webb, planning manager for Gwent Wildlife’:
'Despite having spent many years opposing development on the Gwent Levels, it came as a shock to me recently to realise that the Levels are a shadow of their former selves'.
Sustainable Wales believes the appointment of Ken Skates to ‘transport secretary’ in the Senedd, can only deepen such gloom.
Writers showing their support and reading work inspired by the Levels will include Alan Roderick, Lesley James, Laura Wainwright and Robert Minhinnick.
Wainwright will use the event at Le Pub on April 16 to launch her new publication, ‘Coedcernyw amongst Other Things’, from Clutag Press.
Much of Laura Wainwright’s writing and art stems from the Gwent Levels. (See attachments).
Painting: ‘This Light is a Trick’ by Laura Wainwright, inspired by the Gwent Levels.
Further details contact Robert Minhinnick via: Contact
GWENT LEVELS CAMPAIGN
Ten days before Christmas, 2023, I went with writer and artist Laura Wainwright to explore parts of the ‘Gwent Levels’, at Uskmouth. It was my first visit, although Laura is familiar with the area, sometimes taking her children walking there.
We went because the area is increasingly threatened by various developments. Only in the last four years has the Welsh government rejected plans for a new extension of the M4 motorway through parts of these wetlands.
The weather proved raw and blustery, but we were both delighted to encounter immediately some of the very particular wildlife that inhabits the area.
I saw my first ever reed bunting, and keen-eyed Laura identified a heron on the Severn mudflats, and thus we are writing, painting and sketching our expedition highlights.
This exploration occurred at the same time as the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, especially in Gaza. Personally I found combining in my writing the situations in both Gwent Levels and Gaza, quite natural.
Some of this work will be performed at 7.30 pm, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, at ‘Le Pub’, 19, High St., NEWPORT NP20 1FW.
This will be a live performance featuring spoken word, music and film.
The event is organized by Sustainable Wales Cymru Gynaliadwy.
Details for those who wish to perform or attend, from: <robert.minhinnick@sustainablewales.org.uk>
THE REEN
a poem for two voices
Or rhyne or rhewyn
or simply ditch but even
the word itself disappearing
but nothing to be done, nothing to be done
like the creatures
we might have discovered there
yet nothing can be done
nothing can be done
and I turn on the radio
and over the ghettoes of Gaza
in the ruined boulevards
another child is weeping
but nothing will be done
nothing will be done
- ah, the petrol-coloured dragonfly,
the chevron of the demoiselle,
this one red, this one emerald -
or an exhibit in the museum
of barbed wire
with which we encircle the world,
no nothing to be done
nothing to be done
voice of the reaper, song of the drone
while the children must cry all night
in the rhyne and the rhewyn in the ditch in the reen
but even the word itself disappearing
like the creatures we might
have discovered there
- ghost of a yellowhammer
glimpsed though gorse,
grass snake aswim
in sedge beside the solar farm,
heron, a hermit holding on
beside its JCB scrape -
but nothing can be done
nothing can be done
so once again I turn on the radio
and over the ghettoes of Gaza
comes the harpies’ music,
the predator’s sigh
when even the words are disappearing,
rhyne or rhewyn or ditch or reen
because it is somebody else’s language
loved and lost
but nothing can be done
nothing can be done
and then I am reminded
that language is my own
but there’s nothing to be done
nothing to be done
but how memory maims
and how all grief is someone else’s guilt
while somebody else’s country
is vanishing like pixels on a screen
yet there’s nothing to be done
nothing to be done
in the ditch and the rhewyn and the rhyne and the reen
but nothing will be done nothing will be done
and now I am reminded by the same radio
that the country is my own,
and the voice of the reaper, the song of the drone:
they too are mine.
Yet there’s nothing will be done,
nothing will be done…
(With thanks to Marwan Makhoul, poet born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother in 1979 in the village of Boquai'a in the Upper Galilee region of Palestine).
Release date: Tuesday 26 March 2024.