Hay On Wye straddles the border, straddles minds, causes confusion. Google it and it comes up as being in Hereford. Though it's technically in Wales, you can walk down the road and cross the border without knowing. Pen-y-Park's on the English side, while Glasbury's on the Welsh one; street names suggest an English market town, with the exception of Heol y Dwr.
Last weekend I read at Kilvert's Beerfest , the first ever there; combining music, literature and many other events. Beers were predominantly from Wales, with names like Rhymney and Otley I instantly recognised. I was down on the programme as 'Welsh Poet & Author' as if the other contributors weren't quite. Local Bookbinder Mr Bradshaw read a chapter from his vast book based on the Mabinogion and, on a scale of Welshness, defeated me hands down.
Hay is still Britain's number one Book Town and I met the man responsible for all that, self-styled King of Hay Richard Booth, who regularly represents that other King ( Arthur Scargill) in elections. Booth has sold his main bookshop to an American woman who is less interested in the antiquarian aspect of it. His castle is dilapidated, but due for renovation as a museum, with the Mabinogion as important as books as an overriding theme.
Hay Book Town has, in the past, tried to sell its brand elsewhere, yet places like Blaenavon never really took off and were exploited by unscrupulous individuals. The Hay Literature Festival, however, has sold its brand throughout the world and there have been equivalent Hays in Beirut, India, Colombia and Spain.
Welsh Literature in the Hay Festival is as marginalised and largely ignored as the sense of Wales in Hay itself. London literati and media celebs transplant themselves there over Whitsun, with discussions and talks taking precedence over readings.
There are Welsh classes in Hay and many people do look west rather than east for identity. However, despite the impending demise of books themselves, this affluent little town is undoubtedly on another planet to the Valleys.
Borders do have that quality to confuse and confound. As a teenager, I often travelled during long summer holidays from Barry to Weston on the paddle steamer; not as an excursion, but from my gran's in Wales to my grandparents in England. It did accentuate the sense of two separate countries, this crossing of the sea (albeit a gentle Channel).
Yet, my English grandparents had spent much of their lives in Aberystwyth and had Nonconformist teetotaller backgrounds, while my Welsh gran was a High Church Anglican who always insisted on 'BBC English' ,as it was called then. My Somerset grandfather loved the dialect he'd used all his life and I can still recall the meanings of words like 'dabster' and 'oughts'( if that's the spelling) : 'liking something a lot' and 'leftovers' respectively. I'm sure his enthusiam passed on to me.
The blurring borders of nationalities in my own house were also bemusing. My Welsh father had always been fiercely anti-Welsh language as a result (he always said) of his dealings with farmers during his work in west Wales. My English mother was a devotee of Dylan Thomas and , having been brought up in Aberystwyth, told me stories about being taught by Gwenno Lewis ( Alun Lewis's widow) in Ardwyn Grammar and seeing Caradoc Evans walk around the town completely ostracized because of his book 'My People'.
THE KING OF HAY
The King's head is on the bar,
but that's not the name of the pub.
Roundheads have left it there
after their occupation of the town.
He's pale and bald and bespectacled,
the King of Books here, selling out to an American,
his castle in disrepair, dust accumulating :
soon a museum to the printed word.
In the beer garden a tent full of barrels
and inventive names, inscribed glasses ;
a musketeer explains the impact of shot,
one of the New Model Army deals with a traitor.
The Mabinogion-inspired bookbinder reads
from a huge tome he lovingly created,
£120 for one and only one edition.
The King is there in person, to listen.
I ask him about Arthur Scargill, another one ;
he replies in riddles about Bill Clinton.
He can hardly walk, his stick the moving
scaffold of his collapsing building.
Last weekend I read at Kilvert's Beerfest , the first ever there; combining music, literature and many other events. Beers were predominantly from Wales, with names like Rhymney and Otley I instantly recognised. I was down on the programme as 'Welsh Poet & Author' as if the other contributors weren't quite. Local Bookbinder Mr Bradshaw read a chapter from his vast book based on the Mabinogion and, on a scale of Welshness, defeated me hands down.
Hay is still Britain's number one Book Town and I met the man responsible for all that, self-styled King of Hay Richard Booth, who regularly represents that other King ( Arthur Scargill) in elections. Booth has sold his main bookshop to an American woman who is less interested in the antiquarian aspect of it. His castle is dilapidated, but due for renovation as a museum, with the Mabinogion as important as books as an overriding theme.
Hay Book Town has, in the past, tried to sell its brand elsewhere, yet places like Blaenavon never really took off and were exploited by unscrupulous individuals. The Hay Literature Festival, however, has sold its brand throughout the world and there have been equivalent Hays in Beirut, India, Colombia and Spain.
Welsh Literature in the Hay Festival is as marginalised and largely ignored as the sense of Wales in Hay itself. London literati and media celebs transplant themselves there over Whitsun, with discussions and talks taking precedence over readings.
There are Welsh classes in Hay and many people do look west rather than east for identity. However, despite the impending demise of books themselves, this affluent little town is undoubtedly on another planet to the Valleys.
Borders do have that quality to confuse and confound. As a teenager, I often travelled during long summer holidays from Barry to Weston on the paddle steamer; not as an excursion, but from my gran's in Wales to my grandparents in England. It did accentuate the sense of two separate countries, this crossing of the sea (albeit a gentle Channel).
Yet, my English grandparents had spent much of their lives in Aberystwyth and had Nonconformist teetotaller backgrounds, while my Welsh gran was a High Church Anglican who always insisted on 'BBC English' ,as it was called then. My Somerset grandfather loved the dialect he'd used all his life and I can still recall the meanings of words like 'dabster' and 'oughts'( if that's the spelling) : 'liking something a lot' and 'leftovers' respectively. I'm sure his enthusiam passed on to me.
The blurring borders of nationalities in my own house were also bemusing. My Welsh father had always been fiercely anti-Welsh language as a result (he always said) of his dealings with farmers during his work in west Wales. My English mother was a devotee of Dylan Thomas and , having been brought up in Aberystwyth, told me stories about being taught by Gwenno Lewis ( Alun Lewis's widow) in Ardwyn Grammar and seeing Caradoc Evans walk around the town completely ostracized because of his book 'My People'.
THE KING OF HAY
The King's head is on the bar,
but that's not the name of the pub.
Roundheads have left it there
after their occupation of the town.
He's pale and bald and bespectacled,
the King of Books here, selling out to an American,
his castle in disrepair, dust accumulating :
soon a museum to the printed word.
In the beer garden a tent full of barrels
and inventive names, inscribed glasses ;
a musketeer explains the impact of shot,
one of the New Model Army deals with a traitor.
The Mabinogion-inspired bookbinder reads
from a huge tome he lovingly created,
£120 for one and only one edition.
The King is there in person, to listen.
I ask him about Arthur Scargill, another one ;
he replies in riddles about Bill Clinton.
He can hardly walk, his stick the moving
scaffold of his collapsing building.
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