Diary date

Tuesday 12 May
Miles Cato: Adventures of a dealer in Welsh art

The Honorable Society of Cymmrodorion
British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, SW1
6.30pm; all welcome.

Dr Richard Price of Newington Green

Newington Green Unitarian Church is London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use. Among its famous worshippers was 'mother of feminism' Mary Wollstonecraft; her friend and mentor Dr Richard Price was the church's most prominent minister.

Price was born in Llangeinor, Glamorgan in 1723 and came to London in 1740 to study; from 1758 he was preacher at Newington Green. He put forward politically radical ideas in his preaching. In 1789, as the Bastille fell, he preached a pro-revolutionary sermon On Love of Country. He similarly supported the American Revolution, arguing that while the monarchy was legitimate in Britain because it had the consent of the people (in the 1688 Bill of Rights), there was no such consent from the Americans or French.

Price was not only a great promoter of liberty and equality and political and religious radical. He also invented actuarial life tables, still used today, and advised America and France on their financial systems. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, had the Freedom of the City of London, and received an honorary degree from Yale University.

When Price died in 1791, he was honoured by a national day of mourning in France.

Tonight:

At the London Welsh Centre this evening, a chance to make and listen to music:

Our FIRST Open Mike night at the centre - THIS FRIDAY A Jam (& Honey) session!
ENTRANCE FREE TO ALL MEMBERS AND FRIENDS 7.30 ish to late

Lead Artist this Friday Art Simpson on Sax with friends;
Also promised recording artist Mitch Palmer on Guitar;

Bring your own talent & join in!

Come & support this evening which - if it is succesful - will become a regular
feature at the club.

Poetry on Wednesday

Don't forget the evening of poetry this Wednesday night at the London Welsh Centre. Celebrating the anthology Poetry 1900-2000: One Hundred Poets from Wales, the event will feature editor Meic Stephens and poet Paul Henry, hosted by Fraser Cains.

Practical info:
FREE event
Venue: The bar, London Welsh Centre, Gray's Inn Road
Time: 7.30 for 8pm, Wednesday 22 April 2009

Quick, it's comedy time!

Tomorrow (Friday 17 April), it's another unmissable comedy night with There's Lovely See. MC Steve Parry hosts a line-up including Tom Goodliffe, Paul Harry Allen and Wes Zaharuk. Judging by previous evenings, it will be a brilliant evening - and don't forget, every ticket includes a free drink! (Use the button on the right to buy them online).

Practical info
Venue: London Welsh Centre, Gray's Inn Road
Time: Friday 20 March, 8pm (doors open 7.30)
Booking: 0207 837 3722 / click here to buy online / pay on door.

Poetry 1900-2000: Wyn Griffith

This is the fourth in the series of poets' lives taken from the profiles Meic Stephens gives us as a taster in Poetry 1900-2000. The anthology will be celebrated on 22 April at the London Welsh Centre: details here.

Wyn Griffith was born in Llandrillo yn Rhos in 1890, the son of a headmaster, and left Wales in 1909 to join the civil service where he rose to be an Assistant Secretary. He served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in World War 1 and witnessed the slaughter at Mametz Wood. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre. In later life he was a regular on the radio in the Round Britain Quiz. He wrote prose for his children so that they would get an insight into his Welsh background. He wrote one book of verse, The Barren Tree, which contains a verse play, Branwen. His works are those of a Welshman who experienced the horrors of war and totalinarianism in Europe.

What towered land of man’s endeavour
will first be desert, with all our learning
a burnt page trodden in the dust of error?

Text: Fraser Cains

Poetry 1900-2000: A G Prys-Jones

This is the third in the series of poets' lives taken from the profiles Meic Stephens gives us as a taster in Poetry 1900-2000. The anthology will be celebrated on 22 April at the London Welsh Centre: details here.

Arthur Glyn Prys Jones was born in Denbigh in 1888 and moved to Pontypridd aged nine. He went to Llandovery College and Jesus College Oxford and became a teacher in History and English and a schools inspector. A president in the 1970s of the (Welsh) Academi Cymraeg, he was the first Welsh poet of 20th Century writing in English who was inspired by his nationality and used it as a source of pride and inspiration. His poetry is written in the simple metrical style of Welsh lyrical poetry; a freer form is used when dealing with the people and landscape of Wales. He also wrote comic verse.

I heard her trysting call fall through the trees
Within the primrose wood where Merlin flings
His saffron mantle to the daffodils.

Text: Fraser Cains

Poetry 1900-2000: Huw Menai

This is the second in the series of poets' lives taken from the profiles Meic Stephens gives us as a taster in Poetry 1900-2000. The anthology will be celebrated on 22 April at the London Welsh Centre: details here.

Born in 1888 in Caernarfon, Huw Menai left school at 12 to go to the mines in South Wales. He got employment in Merthyr Vale and became politically active, leading to him getting the sack. He became a weigher and was seen as a ‘companies man’. Often unemployed, Menai fathered eight children. Welsh-speaking, he wrote simple archaic poetry in English and was taken up by fashionable left-wing, middle class London circles. He was known as ’the poet of the South Wales Coalfield’.

Poetry 1900-2000: W H Davies

Poetry 1900 - 2000 is the Library Of Wales poetry anthology edited by Meic Stephens which will be read and discussed on Wednesday 22nd April in the bar at the London Welsh Centre, Grays Inn Rd in the company of Meic Stephens, poet Paul Henry, Fraser Cains and any poets and friends there on the night.

Here is the first in our series of lives of the poets taken from the profiles Meic Stephens gives us as a taster in the anthology.

It starts with the hobo WH Davies, author of the Autobiography of the Super Tramp which catapaulted him to instant fame in1908. Born in 1871 in Newport, Gwent he was brought up by his father’s parents in a pub in Newport’s docklands. Apprenticed to a picture framer at the age of 14 he became a wanderer and lover of art, and nature which he discovered on walks in rural Gwent. In 1893 at the age of 23 with a small sum left him by his grandmother he left for America to seek his fortune but without success: he became a hobo riding the boxcars and in 1899 on his way to the Klondyke goldfields he fell from a train and had his right leg amputated at the knee.

He returned to London and in 1905 began publishing his own poetry and with the success of Super Tramp and patronage from the likes of George Bernard Shaw he became a man of letters. In 1923 he married a former prostitute. ‘Young Emma’, their story, was published posthumously in 1980. He died in his home Glendower in Gloucestrshire in 1940.

The poem he is best remembered for is Leisure which opens:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

His poems celebrate nature and touch on social injustice and the suffering of marginal people.

Text: Fraser Cains. Image: plaque at Davies' birthplace, by Martinevans123 at wikimedia.