When my manuscript for my latest book 'Barkin!' was accepted by Carreg Gwalch I texted my daughter.
'Book just taken by publisher. Barkin!'
'Isn't that a good thing?' she replied.
Titles like this can cause confusion. I have to thank the Bartzman for his favourite word, who in turn blames his wife.
Even he asked me where the 'g' had got to, when he saw the cover.
'Barkin!' is fitting for a book which includes a plethora of either slightly or very crazy characters, including the collection of people in 'Owlin at-a Moon' who join in with a wolf chorus in the smokers' yard of a pub down town (see the photo above, where it's set).
I seemed to encounter a whole succession of people wandering around in various guises, such as the girl who dons a blonde wig on the bus, a posh pirate who invades our Open Mic. session and, above all, the infamous 'Dress-up Dave' who used to inhabit the Merthyr streets in multifarious disguises, one of his most intriguing being Dave Hitchcock, brother of the famous film director!
Dave - a native of Ponty - moved his one-man fancy dress show to Cardiff and then disappeared. I just hope he hasn't been locked away.
With the exception of the story 'Screwy' - written from a schoolboy's perspective - the vast majority of poems and stories take place in the town of Merthyr itself : bus station, Magistrates Court and supermarket for example.
Dialect is the closest way to express the language of these streets. My connection with the town now is through friends and also the time I spend in those very places where these are set. I have generally shifted away from the many school-based poems of my other two dialect books 'Graffiti Narratives' and ' Coulda Bin Summin' ( which one wag thought was in Arabic!).
There are still a few inspired by the classroom and one is 'All Poetree's Gay', where the narrator has won a poetry competition, but is overcome with embarrassment as his school friends dismiss poetry as 'gay'.
Humour is fundamental to the book, just as it is an important way of coming to terms with suffering and struggle. The main character in the story 'Bus-station Clinic' (to be featured in the website Americymru's 'eto' magazine) believes the bus-station's full of people who need curing. He devises various strategies and weird inventions to address this problem.
I know there's despair in the book as well, yet it reflects a time when many people are finding it increasingly hard to cope. One of the best examples is the narrator of 'Em'tied Lives' who is about to lose his house through repossession, after working so diligently to build up his family's life, sacrificing his relationship with his children in the process. It's all too familiar story nowadays.
While some of my poems are entirely fictional, such as this one, others describe a real incident and embellish it.
'In-a Bus Shelter' is about an encounter with a very gruff, deep-voiced Cockney transvestite when I was travelling from Ebbw Vale to Llanhilleth.
Sometimes a poem can begin with realism and then lift off into realms of fantasy, as in 'Ewman Advert', where I'm standing near to KFC in Cyfarthfa Retail Park.
The sheer intensity of the smell transform me into a standing advert (with more than a nod to Kafka), a weird creature with chicken legs and breadcrumb skin!
I am fascinated by taking a persona which is far removed from my own experiences, but also much more comfortable using a voice not far from my own, as observer. This is something I've embraced more readily, even though my own accent is definitely not the local one. Perhaps there's an inner voice ( I have one for Cymraeg at times also), which translates certain aspects of life into the vernacular.
The cover is the most arresting of any of my books ; the painting 'Blwyddyn o eira, blwyddyn o lawndra' by the brilliant Merthyr artist Gus Payne.
A thick-set man, arms outstretched, has his face open to a snowy sky, while his dog is obliviously intent on eating from a bowl.
He's on his knees and catching the fullness of the falling sky.
It's a 'barkin' thing to do, in front of railings which guard a chapel, on the grass with a wind-bent tree in the background. It's 'barkin' yet somehow right : a fitting celebration of feather-fall, of cloud-crystals downing.
It all makes sense in the same way as 'Doc Dyer' from 'Bus-station Clinic' tries to treat the drug-addicts with his own-made remedy . In a different dimension, his madness has an inescapable logic.
Barkin
Lately I seen im
totelee without Fancy Dress.
It's like spottin
yewer footie idol
in a suit,
or some lush model
with all er clothes on.
Ee wuz carryin
two bopa-bags
full o shoppin.
Ee wore a grey suit,
white tie an shirt
with-a hankie in-a pocket ;
is silvery air
woz plastered down
in thick, greasy strands
tryin t ide is baldin,
it ung in a wiry web
right above is fore'ead.
Makes a change from D-Day Dave,
Mr. Universe Dave or Crocodile DunDave
with is corky at,
or April Fool's Dave with jester bells.
I wan'ed t peek in is bags
t see if they woz full o costumes
t keep us all cleckin -
'Barkin? Ee's-a definition o barkin!'
'Book just taken by publisher. Barkin!'
'Isn't that a good thing?' she replied.
Titles like this can cause confusion. I have to thank the Bartzman for his favourite word, who in turn blames his wife.
Even he asked me where the 'g' had got to, when he saw the cover.
'Barkin!' is fitting for a book which includes a plethora of either slightly or very crazy characters, including the collection of people in 'Owlin at-a Moon' who join in with a wolf chorus in the smokers' yard of a pub down town (see the photo above, where it's set).
I seemed to encounter a whole succession of people wandering around in various guises, such as the girl who dons a blonde wig on the bus, a posh pirate who invades our Open Mic. session and, above all, the infamous 'Dress-up Dave' who used to inhabit the Merthyr streets in multifarious disguises, one of his most intriguing being Dave Hitchcock, brother of the famous film director!
Dave - a native of Ponty - moved his one-man fancy dress show to Cardiff and then disappeared. I just hope he hasn't been locked away.
With the exception of the story 'Screwy' - written from a schoolboy's perspective - the vast majority of poems and stories take place in the town of Merthyr itself : bus station, Magistrates Court and supermarket for example.
Dialect is the closest way to express the language of these streets. My connection with the town now is through friends and also the time I spend in those very places where these are set. I have generally shifted away from the many school-based poems of my other two dialect books 'Graffiti Narratives' and ' Coulda Bin Summin' ( which one wag thought was in Arabic!).
There are still a few inspired by the classroom and one is 'All Poetree's Gay', where the narrator has won a poetry competition, but is overcome with embarrassment as his school friends dismiss poetry as 'gay'.
Humour is fundamental to the book, just as it is an important way of coming to terms with suffering and struggle. The main character in the story 'Bus-station Clinic' (to be featured in the website Americymru's 'eto' magazine) believes the bus-station's full of people who need curing. He devises various strategies and weird inventions to address this problem.
I know there's despair in the book as well, yet it reflects a time when many people are finding it increasingly hard to cope. One of the best examples is the narrator of 'Em'tied Lives' who is about to lose his house through repossession, after working so diligently to build up his family's life, sacrificing his relationship with his children in the process. It's all too familiar story nowadays.
While some of my poems are entirely fictional, such as this one, others describe a real incident and embellish it.
'In-a Bus Shelter' is about an encounter with a very gruff, deep-voiced Cockney transvestite when I was travelling from Ebbw Vale to Llanhilleth.
Sometimes a poem can begin with realism and then lift off into realms of fantasy, as in 'Ewman Advert', where I'm standing near to KFC in Cyfarthfa Retail Park.
The sheer intensity of the smell transform me into a standing advert (with more than a nod to Kafka), a weird creature with chicken legs and breadcrumb skin!
I am fascinated by taking a persona which is far removed from my own experiences, but also much more comfortable using a voice not far from my own, as observer. This is something I've embraced more readily, even though my own accent is definitely not the local one. Perhaps there's an inner voice ( I have one for Cymraeg at times also), which translates certain aspects of life into the vernacular.
The cover is the most arresting of any of my books ; the painting 'Blwyddyn o eira, blwyddyn o lawndra' by the brilliant Merthyr artist Gus Payne.
A thick-set man, arms outstretched, has his face open to a snowy sky, while his dog is obliviously intent on eating from a bowl.
He's on his knees and catching the fullness of the falling sky.
It's a 'barkin' thing to do, in front of railings which guard a chapel, on the grass with a wind-bent tree in the background. It's 'barkin' yet somehow right : a fitting celebration of feather-fall, of cloud-crystals downing.
It all makes sense in the same way as 'Doc Dyer' from 'Bus-station Clinic' tries to treat the drug-addicts with his own-made remedy . In a different dimension, his madness has an inescapable logic.
Barkin
Lately I seen im
totelee without Fancy Dress.
It's like spottin
yewer footie idol
in a suit,
or some lush model
with all er clothes on.
Ee wuz carryin
two bopa-bags
full o shoppin.
Ee wore a grey suit,
white tie an shirt
with-a hankie in-a pocket ;
is silvery air
woz plastered down
in thick, greasy strands
tryin t ide is baldin,
it ung in a wiry web
right above is fore'ead.
Makes a change from D-Day Dave,
Mr. Universe Dave or Crocodile DunDave
with is corky at,
or April Fool's Dave with jester bells.
I wan'ed t peek in is bags
t see if they woz full o costumes
t keep us all cleckin -
'Barkin? Ee's-a definition o barkin!'
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