In the last couple of weeks I have had a poem included in Irish poet Kevin Higgins' excellent e-anthology '21 Poems for Jeremy Corbyn and, coming up, they'll be another called 'The Long Road' in a Plaid Cymru e-book.
  Is this the cultural equivalent of entryism?
  Well, I'd say not, of course.
  My claim is that, just like the Scottish referendum, the candidature of left-winger Corbyn has brought out a new spirit of unity and solidarity on the Left, similar to that achieved by the Occupy movement.
  I made it clear to Kevin Higgins that I was no Labourite. I have , after all, spent most of my politically active days campaigning against their reactionary politics.
   But, I really do want the Left to become more united.
   Ultimately not under leaders such as Wood, Sturgeon or Corbyn, but with people themselves pushing for action on the many issues which are seriously affecting us today.
   I've no faith in leaders to deliver.
   This is not only because I know the system will alter them, not they the system - as singer-songwriter Rod Tolchock said , 'You gain power only to discover how little power you gain' - but because I realise fully that, at the last resort, it's the City and multi-nationals who rule this country and not the politicians (unless they do their bidding).
   I'd like  to see a peaceful revolution in my country , Cymru, to set up a republic run on anarcho-syndicalist lines, not just because these are my ideals.
  No, whatever anyone  says about 'dreamers' or 'utopians', I would adamantly reply that true change can only be achieved from below. It cannot be imposed from above, because people's consciousness will not have been altered.
   I would use education as a prime example.
   Yes, Corbyn rightly pronounces about the need for a thoroughly comprehensive system ; but here in Cymru we have predominantly comprehensive education, which is only that in name.
   What's vital is to set out a totally different education system where failure is not built in.
   Again, I quote Rod Tolchock - ' If one person fails, the system has failed.'
   I have blogged about this many times and a genuine comprehensive system is one with no private schools, exams, uniforms or hierarchies. It should mean schools run by pupils and teachers.
   No reformist politician is going to propose these policies, yet they are essential for the future well-being of our children.
   Who can defend a system where any child is deemed a failure?
   When I think about Corbyn and his laudable emphasis on policies - many of which I closely identify with - I can't help but think about my late, lamented friend and comrade Jack Gilbert.
   Jack, I'm pretty certain, would now be rejoining the party he left years ago, when they abandoned Clause Four.
   Jack hailed from Derby and stood for  Scargill's party on Harrow Council after he'd left Labour.
   He soon became disillusioned with Socialist Labour , when Scargill refused to co-operate with other groups and parties on the Left.
   Jack thrived in the Welsh Socialist Alliance in Merthyr and stood as an Independent Socialist for Merthyr Council.
   Plaid condemned him as representing the 'loony left', but Jack was anything but.
   He worked tirelessly in his community of Quaker's Yard and Treharris to help set up a community allotment, drop-in centre and  Credit Union.
   He always believed in the kind of grassroots activism epitomised by Cymru Goch and espoused vehemently by the WSA.
   He was understandably devastated when the latter broke up.
   Like myself, Jack's politics were an amalgam of many philosophies, among them socialism, anarchism and republicanism.
   Yes, he surely would've tried to join Labour, but I'm sure that, like thousands of others, he'd have been stopped from voting for Corbyn.
   His background in other parties and groups would've meant they would have barred him.
   Jack was no reformist either, yet he did recognise the need for a platform and also that parliamentary politics can achieve some notable triumphs.
   There are areas where Jack and I would have differed I'm certain, most definitely about the British state.
   I would argue that any solution based on the British state is doomed to failure, because Britain is held together by capitalism, monarchy and war.
   While Jack would've claimed that the British working-class need to stand together in a common cause, I'd say that a global economy requires global solutions and that is why we have to embrace the IWW, and the notion of One Big Union.
   I wish he was around today so we could have that debate.
   He was never dogmatic or aggressive and saw gentle persuasion as the way ( Corbyn is a similar character, in fact).
  Maybe Jack would have joined the IWW and also tried to rejoin Labour.
  I like to think his dream of greater Left unity is that much closer.

                                   DEAD  STAR
                               i.m. Jack  Gilbert


The star I can see
has long gone, exploded
into minute particles ;
yet clear this night
as touch in dream.


Passing through the station
again on the way
to another game,
you are not standing
in improbable mauve jacket
squinting at the blur
of the carriages' movement.


It's your light remains
in the circle as we talk
and drink ale you defied
(its sugar your poison);
luminous among these people
who would give their bodies
to build the barricades.


You, among those allotments
were the welcome sun,
or in the community centre
where the bare bulbs hung ;
your stellar energy so near
yet millions of light years away.   

   'Everyone Was A Bird' is the third album from band/duo Grasscut, Andrew Phillips & Marcus O'Dair.
   Both fans of the great Robert Wyatt, the latter his biographer with the recent 'Different Every Time', also name of a double album of Wyatt collaborations, solo performances and band appearances ( Soft Machine & Matching Mole).
   Based in Brighton, but with strong Welsh connections.
   Their poignant and subtle song 'Richardson Road' a high-point of that album : sad scat and cornet-playing from Wyatt.....a memory-voyage to a suburban scene.
   I fell in love with the latest album. It possessed my days and I woke up nights singing melodies in my mind.
   What genre?.......classical/ folk/jazz/ rock/ electronica.
   The best music defies categories.
   Here are the tracks, in order and in impressions :

ISLANDER - begins whispering....Ynys Enlli or coast off Alba?
   Rhythm of oars splashing, of hands in sea, swimming.
    Pizzicato sunlight.
   Diving down like Rob Wyatt's 'Rock Bottom'.
  Later, ocean to land. 
Strings - surface of sea left behind.
RADAR - night lights and a jagged beat.
    Stars and signs.
  Awareness through cosmos - keyboards signalling.
     'Not a symbol but the scene'
   Echoes of Eno.
       Glimmers of dawn from island.
    Light notes of violin.
CURLEWS (latest single) - birdsong and piano.
   Tenor tones echoing calls. Cello flow of river.
       'Flickering harbour light'
   Layers of music - air/ water/ bird-sound.
  ' All but lost to me now'
   Searching memories.
High , innocent, choirboy-like ( Wyatting).
   Calls drift away into a clockwork day.
FALLSWATER - Halls resound with ancient chanting, like Gaelic bard.
   Wind harsh - 'bones' & 'moans'
      Visceral vocabulary - 'drip   drip    drip '   .....word-play.
   A ghost place, another dimension.
      Repeated phrases in crescendo. Music is waterfall.
    High to low and a final droplet cascade.
HALF-LIFE  -   of Trawsfynydd nuclear power station, of reactors by the lake.
   Memories of the place...'By concrete towers he disappears'.
      Distant descriptions of younger self.
   Cans of coke in the cafe - half full. Reactors still a threat.
     Spoken voice - only the imagination perfect. A building cannot be built without faults.
SNOWDOWN - reminders of Thea Gilmore covering Yoko Ono's 'Listen, the snow is falling'.
   Delicate 'silent white' of woman's vocals.
  Depths of drifts, of cello and bass clarinet which is like the voice of winter itself......common & unique.
   Rhythm of flakes falling.
       A stranger on the snow.
THE FIELD - Winter scene before dawn.
    Heartbeat string-pluck.
  'All along the fallow field'
   A mysterious presence accompanying. Who is the other?
   Think of Hardy, of chalklands.
       Footsteps' drumbeat.
RED KITE - Currents' airflow.
   Poet's voice - 'Everyone was a bird'.....'The song was wordless....wordless'
   Gentle, yet rough-edged.
     Rising, red kite above scene.
   Constant movement and flow-flight.
  Still here - copper / slate / towers.
    Call of past, of Wales.
       Sassoon's words deny words can be everything.
                        ************************

   This is an interview with half of the band, Andrew Phillips, who sings and plays keyboards and guitar.
 

Firstly, a big llongyfarchiadau to you both on the album, which is magnificent.

Had much critical response yet?

Well thanks! Yes we've had some amazing reviews, from The Wire, Q, Mojo, Uncut, The Quietus, Irish Times, mostly around when the album came out in May

I love the layers of sound which keep merging, submerging and emerging. Does your experience in classical & film music influence this?

Yes I think so. It's how I've always worked. There's a scene in my head, and I'm thinking 'what does it sound like?' What forces does this need, and how can I make it really sound like it feels. And I hope the interplay of live strings and electronic textures on this album reflect the places themselves.

Lyrically it's like folk, but your sound is very different....how would you describe it?

Lyrically I'm most influenced by American poets like George Oppen and Robert Creeley, as well as British poets and writers. I think for this album I would describe it as a bit chamber, a bit electronica, a bit folk, mainly because of the song structures, the blend of strings and electronics, where the vocals sit in the songs, and the themes.

Although not a strict concept album, it's tied together by meditations on natural landscapes and birds and , of course, the man - made intrusions. Did you set out to do this?

Yes, absolutely. I wanted to make the musical equivalent of a series of woodcuts - scenes that hopefully the music would etch out. And I'm always interested in landscapes that are partial - neither pastoral nor urban, shaped perhaps by incongruous elements. But then, only incongruous because you have some kind of ideal in your head - but what is that, why do you have it, and where does it come from?

I'm very interested in the Welsh connections. Can you explain them?

My Mum's family are from Arthog in Gwynedd, and my Dad's parents lived in Fairbourne down the road from there. So though I grew up in Jersey, I spent every summer in Wales, and it always felt like long term home. You know, ardal, hiraeth, etc! A side of my wife's family comes from Dyffryn Ardudwy, and now my family spends a lot of time in the Rhinogs. So the idea of being drawn to a place in terms of where you draw your identity from is very much at play on this record. Robert Macfarlane writes beautifully about this on his liner notes for the album, which you can read on the Grasscut website.

'Half-life' seems an oblique criticism of nuclear power....or do you see it as a straight description of reality?

For me,  it's exploring that powerful scene, both from how it feels to be there, and a bit of poking about talking to people and researching Trawsfynydd. I can't look look at those towers againast the backdrop of the mountains without thinking about the white heat of mid 20th Century hubris in architecture and technology. So Traws architect Sir Basil Spence's voice is at the end of the song. But then I'm also thinking about the poet Hedd Wyn, from Trawsfynydd, killed in World War 1, and posthumously winning best poet at the Eisteddfod: the song is written in iambic couplets as a tribute to him. And thinking about how Wales has been used as a resource - slate mining, flooding to make reservoirs like Lake Vyrnwy - and how that has transformed the landscape. So the ‘halflife’ is also the slow changing of a landscape over the decades from mining to power to tourism - the workers canteen at Traws is now a very nice cafe.

As a poet, I'm very conscious of lyrics. I may be wrong but a lot reminded me of the sparseness of R.S.Thomas, the bleak landscapes. Is there particular poetry which influences the album?

Yes. Definitely RS. And George Oppen as I mentioned before. Similarly sparse. Geoffrey Hill. And Harriet Tarlo, a contemporary British poet. Also prose writers like JA Baker, and WH Hudson. I was trying to avoid too much description lyrically (or adjectivally) -  I wanted to present things, and let the music give it tone and colour (or black and white).

 

Who is the spoken voice on 'Red Kite?'It's so in keeping with the music's motion?

It's Siegfried Sassoon, reading  ‘Everyone Sang’, where the line’ Everyone Was A Bird’ comes from. I found it quite late in the process and the tone of his reading, and the incredible sense of lift in the poem was perfect for the lift I was trying to get in Red Kite.

 

I know Marcus is a massive Wyatt fan....does he impact on the music and, perhaps, word play?

We're both fans! I can't say he's a conscious influence on my lyrics, but he's on my shoulder every time I sing, and for both of us I think he is the perfect role model for how to conduct yourself as an artist.

What was it like collaborating with him on’ Richardson Road’?

It was an amazing day. One of the best of my musical life. Not easy getting from Brighton to Louth, but his generosity musically and personally, and his and Alfie's as hosts were overwhelming. I had no idea he was going to do the singing/piano thing, as we'd agreed before that he'd play a bit of cornet, but his contribution makes the song.

Do you find live performances tricky, as there's so much instrumentation and I'm assuming it's just you and Marcus on stage?

No we love it! And we play with a drummer , and violinist/harmony singer so the arrangements translate well. Come and see us at Festival No 6 and see what you think.

 

Your last album ‘Unearth’  seems largely electronica based while this one is predominantly acoustic. Do you see future albums as other departures?

I see them as steps forward. I think there's continuity from Reservoir, Lights and We Fold Ourselves to Radar, Curlews, and Red Kite. I agree the sound is different, but this record is about different things. But you're right, the electronic elements take a back on seat on EWAB. I'll certainly continue to explore those liminal areas between the textures and tones of live instruments and electronically generated sounds. Certainly more strings, and maybe a small choir. You heard it here first!



                           Y BARCUD COCH


                       for Andrew & Marcus


Our bird, our emblem -
once near extinction


V for victory
C a country


ubiquitous now,
far as border and Valleys


over crenellations of conifers,
Norman castles, empty summer houses


high mewling cry,
eyes for the kill


over slate-fall hills
and isolated farms


red is rising,
proud white feathers


saved and saving -
'Yma o hyd!'


beyond all speech,
yet a sign.

A memory bridge
from old oak to young willow :
cross to the wildness.

******

Give this stream a name,
water will take it away :
letters seek the sea.

*****

Fence a squirrel-run,
foxes nose here at night-time ;
child's cry, hedgehog, gone.

*****

Ruler from fence-post,
cat chases flies,sharpens claws ;
no-one can own him.

*****

This summer of rain
seeds grow into small, soft suns ;
stream digs towards seams. 

   'Scouse' Pete has a lot to answer for.
   He was the reason I took up blues harmonica and the reason I got into Syd's songs.
   Back in our digs in Aber he left his 'gob iron' around, so I picked it up and blew and blew till I found I could bend the notes round corners and into the west wind.
   His musical taste was as catholic as mine was limited then : from James Brown to Captain Beefheart, Albinoni to T.Rex.
   Unlike myself he was a bopper, a dead ringer for Jagger, a girl-puller with his moves.....hence the Brown.
   I took to Beefheart and also Syd Barrett. I loved the latter's child-like Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear musings, yet always that edge of darkness, of insanity. 
   I soon related to his album 'Madcap' when I found that members of my favourite band Soft Machine were backing him and , as a fan of James Joyce, was amazed at the plaintive setting of 'Golden Hair', from 'Chamber Music'.
   I've recently read Tim Willis' biography of Syd simply called 'Madcap' and , though fascinated by his sad story from fame to chosen anonymity, I'm not much closer to understanding why he abandoned music totally and , for thirty years, lived in a  very modest Cambridge street, refusing to acknowledge his past. 
   Drugs like LSD and Mandrax had a serious affect on him and no doubt contributed to his mental breakdown, which led to Pink Floyd jettisoning him in favour of his good friend Dave Gilmour.
   He may well have completely rejected the whole notion of pop stardom as well and this led to an increasing disillusionment and depression.
   He soon came to resent playing singles like 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play' on stage, exactly as they were on record.
   Syd was ever the experimenter; a restless character who embraced light-shows before their time and wanted to use dissonance to create an array of colours in sound.
   A great influence on David Bowie, he also created  a stage persona which was visually exotic and often androgynous.
   It's also too easy to romantise Syd's life. His mental torments did leave him permanently 'damaged' , as Willis shows, but also caused him to abuse others, especially the  women in his life. There is much evidence of this and one time he appears to have smashed a guitar over the head of one girlfriend, Lindsay Corner.
   I think he may have come to realise just how dangerous he could be to others and that explains why he spent most of his life living alone in the cul-de-sac St. Margaret's Square ( odd name for a Close!).
   It's strange to think how our paths overlapped.
   I was living in Cambridge at the same time as Syd (myself a child, he a teenager) and rode my bike past his family home on Hills Road.
   The river-side open-air pool where he swam with his first proper girl-friend Libby Gausden, was a place where we often spend our summers.
   Years later, teaching at Pen-y-dre High in Merthyr, a colleague in the English Dept. had actually taught both Syd ( or Roger, as he was then) Barrett and Roger Waters. Syd, he told me, was a lovely lad while Waters was very arrogant and surly.
   Just as I had biked everywhere in that 'City of Cycles' Cambridge, so bikes feature greatly in Syd's life.
   In his childhood, as in mine, it was his only way of discovering the city. When he lived alone and carried on painting, he would cycle to the shops every day for his groceries.
   Written and sung by him, one of Pink Floyd's earliest songs is called 'Bike', on the first album 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn' -
         ' I've gotta bike.
          You can ride it if you like.'
   It takes off into cloaks , gingerbread men and clockwork toys.....and all to woo a girl like Libby.
   Ultimately, Syd Barrett left behind many unique and imaginative songs and Roger Barrett left behind Syd.   


                      BARRETTS ON  BIKES


                                       1.


Syd's bike hurtling
down the long avenue
slaloming between tall trees,
smartie-top spokes
making light shows
and foil flag in the breeze.


In love with Libby,
towards the pool
hair a curly mane
bannering back,
he draws curves
of her with wet tyres.


Over the hallowed grass
and the sighing bridge,
all the colours of music
in his starship brain,
down the river paths
waking the book-bound buildings
and launching the ducks.


                                      2.


Roger back from the shops
head down into cul-de-sac,
anonymous coat and gloves
and a shaven skull.


A study in the ordinary,
two baskets of groceries,
his wheeled mule
neither rears nor brays.


'Syd! Syd!' the photographer yells
to try and get his attention.
It's another person's name.
The one they took away.


Back to the warm front room 
and a deck of paints and pens,
the blank white paper sitting,
a partner dozing at the desk.


   

   At the party a barn owl is perched on a stump of driftwood on the lid of a piano.
   It's a 'gwdihw' in the south of Wales , but 'tylluan' in the north.
   I have to say that I prefer the former, with its onomatopoeia.
   The owl looks out sagely on all these celebrating humans toasting 70th birthdays with bubbly wine and nibbling at crustless sarnies. 
   My young great niece asks my brother - ' Is it real Grandad?'

   The owl was our present to my brother and his wife for their 70th.
   They're both keen 'twitchers' and wherever they travel binoculars are as essential as sun tan lotion.
   I recall when we stayed at Miyajima, off the coast of Japan, my brother was up at the 'skrake of dawn' ( a fine Belfast phrase) to seek out the bird-life, while I had been out the night before , sitting by a pond and listening to frogs serenade the moon (David Attenborough has a lot to answer for!).
   I was delighted that my brother and his wife took to the barn owl, as it's important it finds a suitable home.
   It was created by a certain John Davies, who was once a renowned and rightly acclaimed poet in Wales. John was also an excellent editor and I had the pleasure of co-editing the anthology 'The Valleys' with him.
   John straddled north and south : the former coalfields of his native Afan valley, north of Port Talbot, and the slate-lands and coastline of y gogledd.
  I visited him on a number of occasions and even then, he was beginning to devote more and more time to his bird-carving.
   Over 10 years ago he stopped writing poetry completely and gave himself entirely to the beautiful carvings, with his wife Marilyn painting them so meticulously .
   He has become one of the finest in the country.
   The barn owl is so solid and statuesque above its driftwood plinth, which suggests the striations of the sea.
   Since his retirement my brother has also focused very much on one project.
   As well as an ornithologist, my brother is a pilot and is actually building his own full-sized plane in his back garden....not a Jumbo Jet, I hasten to add!
   I recall when we were kids together in Penparcau, near Aberystwyth and my brother's room was packed with Airfix models suspended with string from the ceiling. If we ever argued I would aim a suitable weapon at them.
   His kit planes were even more impressive : expertly manufactured from fragile balsa wood and fine tissue paper taut, varnished then painted; they were propelled high into the Ceredigion air - like the red kites we never saw till years later - by small, pungent oil motors.
   I envied my brother his practical skills.
   The only thing I would make then was TROUBLE (often involving stones).
  I once picked the flowers from a neighbour's garden, knocked on their door and asked them if they wanted to buy a bunch!
   Maybe I was a budding capitalist.
   Now I don't envy him, but appreciate his abilities, just as I can see the poetry in John Davies's wonderful creation :-


                                 CARVED  OWL


                            for John Davies


I waited all morning
for the owl to come :
I signed my name,
could hardly see
its claw-print scrawling.




Opening the box, a nest
of bound bubble-wrap,
it didn't fly up
but merely stood
placed on its perch:




a twisted driftwood rock
with rough touch of salt ;
it was proud as names
of 'gwdihw' and 'tylluan',
took them both, south and north.




I could feel the poetry
of fine chiselled feathers ;
how the wood had become
your metre, your stanzas,
how the shapes your song.