Little can be done to avert the terrible tragedies caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A great deal can be done to prevent a nuclear catastrophe however.
My friend and comrade Tim Richards of the S. Wales Anti-Nuclear Alliance e-mailed supporters this morning warning of potential meltdown of at least one of the reactors. He explained the scientific details cogently, warning us not to be duped by so-called 'experts' and that some of the control rods had failed. This makes the danger of a Chernobyl-type explosion a real possibility.
To me, there have never been any justifications for nuclear power, yet all the main parties have now embraced it and even Plaid Cymru, with an ostensibly anti-nuclear policy, have supported it in Anglesey! The arguments against are manifold : it depends on huge government subsidies, has a record of lethal leaks and near meltdowns, the highly hazardous waste is very difficult to get rid of and the decommissioning of plants is both extortionate and protracted. But, above all else, as one Guardian letter-writer puts it in today's paper - ' catastrophic failure means catastrophic outcome.'
A few years ago I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was so moved by the exhibitions and peace parks there. I was even more touched by hundreds of schoolchildren there to celebrate peace and mourn the many innocents who died as a result of those apocalyptic atom bombs. It's with great sadness that I think of the Japanese nuclear power industry and its ticking bomb ready to go off any second after the two hydrogen explosions and serious injuries.
I know Japan possesses no oil or natural gas but still, you'd think that a country with such a mastery of technology could've devised other forms of energy-production using water, wind and the sun.
On a smaller scale, yet equally devastating for a small Valleys' community, was the Aberfan disaster of October 1966. This was just as preventable as there had been previous warnings of the movement of the large tip above Pant Glas Primary School, where coal waste was dumped. Both the Labour Council and the Coal Board ( the NCB) must share responsibility and , shamefully, in its aftermath a total inability to compensate the families of victims, which was left to charities.
My best known poem is probably 'He Loved Light, Freedom and Animals', based on the inscription on one of the children's graves. I didn't set out to write about the disaster,as I think that would have led to forced emotions.
I am not from the area and, in fact, was living in England when it happened. However, my father-in-law was visiting us from Belfast and wanted to go to the cemetery. It was a time when my wife and I had no children and had been trying for a few years. My reaction to all the gravestones was profound : there were pictures on many, which made it seem as if the tragedy had been very recent.
I was most moved by that one inscription though and the light of the gorse-flowers, birds I imagined the boy loving and the way he'd roam about the hillsides, all brought back my own childhood above Aberystwyth.
I was criticised by one reviewer for laying the blame falsely at the private mine-owners like Bute, comparing the boy dug out of the buried school to a 'child collier'. While I can understand this criticism, I feel it's harsh. My point was to link this event to the past and to suggest that little had improved and a whole community were still paying their price in lives for coal.
At the Comp. where I taught in Merthyr we studied and compared two most powerful poems about the Aberfan disaster, ''Elegy for David Beynon' by Merthyr writer Leslie Norris and an unititled one by Robert Morgan, a painter, teacher and writer who had once been a miner.
Both poems had a great resonance amongst the pupils : Norris imagining
his former school friend and fellow rugby-player Beynon shielding his pupils as the slurry came down and Morgan evoking an imaginary school register to show how a whole generation were absent.
Since writing 'He Loved Light, Freedom and Animals' I have written a number of pieces on the subject, as I've become much closer to the area and its people. 'Among the Debris' is a dialect poem which tells of a teacher suffering the after-effects of a disaster he survived, very much like shell-shock as a result of war.
The character in the poem is fictional, a composite of several I'd heard of or known, but this didn't stop the 'Merthyr Express' from refusing to publish it on their front page. It was a comemoration of the disaster and the local paper had agreed to publish it. Then I had a phone call saying they would not do so, as it was based on a particular person who they named. I insisted it was fictional, but they'd have none of it! They simply couldn't comprehend the idea of poetry as fiction.
The following is a very recent one. It came about because last week my wife decided to avoid traffic queues and take the old road, so my young daughter had a clear view of the cemetery above Aberfan.
THE WHITE ARCHES
'What are they?' she asks
(on the old route for once),
across a valley of river, road, rail, trees,
markings of a canal and a mine
long gone, the tips cleared ;
new school a boast of glass and wood.
'Those are the gravestones of the children.'
The white arches on the hillside,
clean, bright teeth in a row,
arms of 'dansio gwerin' linked;
but bones will not grow
and arms won't catch hold.
Waste piled for years above the school
shifted in heavy rain, warnings
the Coal Board and Council ignored ;
that boy with his painting of planes,
NCB on them, dropping black bombs :
stirrings or a premonition.
She's at the front, so much going on,
listening to music, playing her games,
words of her 'llefaru', tune of 'alaw werin'
competing on the stage of her brain.
Ones like her, chopsy mouths and wayward hair,
speech turned to sludge on their tongues.
My friend and comrade Tim Richards of the S. Wales Anti-Nuclear Alliance e-mailed supporters this morning warning of potential meltdown of at least one of the reactors. He explained the scientific details cogently, warning us not to be duped by so-called 'experts' and that some of the control rods had failed. This makes the danger of a Chernobyl-type explosion a real possibility.
To me, there have never been any justifications for nuclear power, yet all the main parties have now embraced it and even Plaid Cymru, with an ostensibly anti-nuclear policy, have supported it in Anglesey! The arguments against are manifold : it depends on huge government subsidies, has a record of lethal leaks and near meltdowns, the highly hazardous waste is very difficult to get rid of and the decommissioning of plants is both extortionate and protracted. But, above all else, as one Guardian letter-writer puts it in today's paper - ' catastrophic failure means catastrophic outcome.'
A few years ago I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was so moved by the exhibitions and peace parks there. I was even more touched by hundreds of schoolchildren there to celebrate peace and mourn the many innocents who died as a result of those apocalyptic atom bombs. It's with great sadness that I think of the Japanese nuclear power industry and its ticking bomb ready to go off any second after the two hydrogen explosions and serious injuries.
I know Japan possesses no oil or natural gas but still, you'd think that a country with such a mastery of technology could've devised other forms of energy-production using water, wind and the sun.
On a smaller scale, yet equally devastating for a small Valleys' community, was the Aberfan disaster of October 1966. This was just as preventable as there had been previous warnings of the movement of the large tip above Pant Glas Primary School, where coal waste was dumped. Both the Labour Council and the Coal Board ( the NCB) must share responsibility and , shamefully, in its aftermath a total inability to compensate the families of victims, which was left to charities.
My best known poem is probably 'He Loved Light, Freedom and Animals', based on the inscription on one of the children's graves. I didn't set out to write about the disaster,as I think that would have led to forced emotions.
I am not from the area and, in fact, was living in England when it happened. However, my father-in-law was visiting us from Belfast and wanted to go to the cemetery. It was a time when my wife and I had no children and had been trying for a few years. My reaction to all the gravestones was profound : there were pictures on many, which made it seem as if the tragedy had been very recent.
I was most moved by that one inscription though and the light of the gorse-flowers, birds I imagined the boy loving and the way he'd roam about the hillsides, all brought back my own childhood above Aberystwyth.
I was criticised by one reviewer for laying the blame falsely at the private mine-owners like Bute, comparing the boy dug out of the buried school to a 'child collier'. While I can understand this criticism, I feel it's harsh. My point was to link this event to the past and to suggest that little had improved and a whole community were still paying their price in lives for coal.
At the Comp. where I taught in Merthyr we studied and compared two most powerful poems about the Aberfan disaster, ''Elegy for David Beynon' by Merthyr writer Leslie Norris and an unititled one by Robert Morgan, a painter, teacher and writer who had once been a miner.
Both poems had a great resonance amongst the pupils : Norris imagining
his former school friend and fellow rugby-player Beynon shielding his pupils as the slurry came down and Morgan evoking an imaginary school register to show how a whole generation were absent.
Since writing 'He Loved Light, Freedom and Animals' I have written a number of pieces on the subject, as I've become much closer to the area and its people. 'Among the Debris' is a dialect poem which tells of a teacher suffering the after-effects of a disaster he survived, very much like shell-shock as a result of war.
The character in the poem is fictional, a composite of several I'd heard of or known, but this didn't stop the 'Merthyr Express' from refusing to publish it on their front page. It was a comemoration of the disaster and the local paper had agreed to publish it. Then I had a phone call saying they would not do so, as it was based on a particular person who they named. I insisted it was fictional, but they'd have none of it! They simply couldn't comprehend the idea of poetry as fiction.
The following is a very recent one. It came about because last week my wife decided to avoid traffic queues and take the old road, so my young daughter had a clear view of the cemetery above Aberfan.
THE WHITE ARCHES
'What are they?' she asks
(on the old route for once),
across a valley of river, road, rail, trees,
markings of a canal and a mine
long gone, the tips cleared ;
new school a boast of glass and wood.
'Those are the gravestones of the children.'
The white arches on the hillside,
clean, bright teeth in a row,
arms of 'dansio gwerin' linked;
but bones will not grow
and arms won't catch hold.
Waste piled for years above the school
shifted in heavy rain, warnings
the Coal Board and Council ignored ;
that boy with his painting of planes,
NCB on them, dropping black bombs :
stirrings or a premonition.
She's at the front, so much going on,
listening to music, playing her games,
words of her 'llefaru', tune of 'alaw werin'
competing on the stage of her brain.
Ones like her, chopsy mouths and wayward hair,
speech turned to sludge on their tongues.
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