Gwylio’r Gwylwr / Gallery Watching

Ellen Bell is nearly six months into her year-long reportage residency at Ruthin Craft Centre, Ruthin, and Oriel Davies, Newtown, in which her listening and storytelling skills, ‘a Barbara Pym kind of drawn narrative’, are as important as her drawing skills

PUBLISHED ON: 14/02/23

CATEGORY: Blog, Column

The term ‘reportage’ is usually associated with an illustrative response to acts of war or seminal political happenings… Attracted to the small, the …

Read more

More More More

John Barnie on the chaotic order and tangled underbelly of megacities, and the threat of overpopulation to our survival as a species

PUBLISHED ON: 03/08/22

CATEGORY: Column

John Barnie on the chaotic order and tangled underbelly of megacities, and the threat of overpopulation to our survival as a species

Read more

Memories of Drawings: Georgia O’Keeffe in Penarth

Eleanor Williams draws inspiration from a curve in the road in New Mexico, imagined and seen by Georgia O'Keeffe

PUBLISHED ON: 28/07/22

CATEGORY: Column

View from bedroom window of O’Keeffe’s bedroom in New Mexico.   One of the works in the exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s drawings in the Turner H …

Read more

Secular, Scriptural or the Heavenly Host: 6 Angel Rules

Eleanor Williams seeks Truman Capote’s advice about writing like an angel, but comes up with her own rules for embedding angels in your writing

PUBLISHED ON: 28/06/22

CATEGORY: Author process, Column

Truman Capote, it is said, wrote like an angel. Is there a higher compliment? Writing like an angel is synonymous with ease, with perfection of sound …

Read more

In Praise of Marc Almond, True Advocate of World Culture

Shara Atashi on Marc Almond’s cultural internationalism and his mentor and muse, Vadim Kozin

PUBLISHED ON: 27/04/22

CATEGORY: Column

Beyond a community of devoted fans who follow his footsteps everywhere, a valuable, even precious side to Marc Almond’s work remains a little-known se …

Read more

Hafez and Jones: Poets United for Peace

Shara Atashi on the links between eighteenth-century polyglot William Jones and fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez

PUBLISHED ON: 30/03/22

CATEGORY: Column

(Above) frieze at University College, Oxford chapel showing Sir William Jones taking notes from Hindi speakers and scholars, (top) roof of Hafez tomb …

Read more

The Legend of Samad Behrangi, the Storyteller

Shara Atashi on Samad Behrangi, one of the most influential children’s authors of Iran, and campaigner against child poverty and for inclusivity

PUBLISHED ON: 01/03/22

CATEGORY: Column

If someday I should face death – as I surely will – it is not what matters. What does matter is what influence my life or death will have on the lives …

Read more

Solo Women Walking – So What?

Julie Bromilow-Nicklen makes an unscientific survey of the facts and myths about women hiking alone

PUBLISHED ON: 26/01/22

CATEGORY: Column

Last month, a fellow writer contacted me. He found ‘the recent flowering of solo women walkers’ to be an interesting phenomenon and would appreciate m …

Read more

Anna Falcini’s In Between the Folds Are Particles, Aberystwyth Arts Centre

Claire Pickard on an exhibition, based on research into Gwen John’s letters and diaries, which explores projection, performance, subjectivity and the unreachable nature of past experience

PUBLISHED ON: 25/01/22

CATEGORY: Column

The genesis of Anna Falcini’s In Between the Folds Are Particles was her research into Gwen John’s letters and diaries as part of a residency at the A …

Read more

Yew for Two

As the tree-felling season once again approaches, and in Part 2 of his 1960 autobiographical notes, Jim Pratt moves on from Osbaston to another piece of ancient woodland in Monmouth Forest

PUBLISHED ON: 10/11/21

CATEGORY: Column, Memoir

As the tree-felling season once again approaches, and in Part 2 of his 1960 autobiographical notes (Well laid Hedges and Cider) Jim Pratt moves on fro …

Read more