Free pocket guide

Rough Guides and the Visit Wales website have got together to produce a mini Rough Guide to Wales, and it's free! Its 96 pages are packed with information and recommendations, as well as practical information including venues and budget accommodation.

Perfect for the summer holidays, just click here to order your copy.

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

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.

A celebration of Welsh poetry

Poetry 1900-2000 is a collection of work by 100 Welsh poets over 100 years. On Wednesday 22 April, it will be celebrated in a very special evening of Welsh poetry at the London Welsh Centre. Meic Stephens, editor of Poetry 1900-2000 will host the event, accompanied by several of the poets. The audience will also have the opportunity to meet and chat with the authors in the informal, convivial atmosphere of the bar, and to buy the anthology.

The London Welsh Centre has hosted a number of very enjoyable literary events, and this evening should be no exception. It's a wonderful opportunity to meet poets and enjoy literary conversation with a Welsh accent!

Practical info

Time: Wednesday 22 April 2009, 7pm for 7.30pm

Location: Bar, London Welsh Centre, Gray's Inn Road

Admission: free

A different Darwin debate

In this anniversary year, Charles Darwin seems to be everywhere. However, for a different angle on his work, come along to the London Welsh Centre on Monday 30 March for an illustrated talk by author Roy Davies.

The Darwin Conspiracy challenges the conventional story that Darwin raced Alfred Russel Wallace to publication after both had come up with similar theories. Instead, Davies suggests that Darwin had reached a dead end with his own work and borrowed from Wallace's, taking the credit with help from eminent scientific friends.

Roy Davies had a 30-year career at the BBC writing, directing and producing documentaries, and was editor of the Timewatch series. In 1995, he left to become an independent producer and writer. The Darwin Conspiracy was published in 2008.

Practical info:
Venue: London Welsh Centre, Gray's Inn Road
Nearest tube/BR: King's Cross
Time: 7pm, Monday 30 March
More info: GJones@uk.loreal.com / author's website